Accra (Greater Accra Region) 7 Oct.1998

The Ghana Postal Services Corporation made a turnover of 1.5 billion cedis in 1997 compared to 400 million cedis in 1996.

It expects a higher turnover this year, Mr Maxwell Garshong, Director of Planning, told a press conference in Accra, as part of activities marking the 29th World Post Day , which falls on Friday, 9 th October.

He said the performance of Ghana Post has justified its August 1995 separation from Ghana Telecom Company. The two organisations used to be called Post and Telecommunication Corporation.

All the 189 member nations of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) will be celebrating the day under theme "One World, One postal network "

The UPU aims primarily at creating a single postal territory world-wide for reciprocal exchange of posted items. Mr Garshong said Ghana Post has invested over 400 million cedis to improve its operations. "All the renovations, building of Post offices, provision of 35,000 postal panels among other things came from internally generated funds.

He said at present there is a national network of 298 post offices, 703 agencies and about 140 commissioned agents adding that new district assemblies without Post Offices will soon be provided with services.

The Corporation is being restructured to respond to the demands of the Market. The corporation has introduced new services such as cassette post service, post shop service and business reply service.

"Cassette post entails the purchase of a blank cassette and recording whatever message one has from the post recording studio at a fee before mailing.

Business reply service is the prepaid postal service targeted at the business community to promote direct mail within the post."

Mr Garshong said Ghana Post has had a series of meetings with airlines and other courier services to find solutions to mail tampering.

He said Ghana Post has installed close circuit television to check internal tampering with mails in sorting centres and warned that mail thieves will be summarily dismissed.

He called on Ghanaians to advise their relatives living abroad against sending hard currency through the post because it is not only illegal but attracts thieves.

As part of measures to improve upon the quality of postal services, Ghana Post has instituted a 24-hour service at Kotoka International Airport to receive in-coming bags direct from the tarmac. GRi