Bobby,

  1. How do you intend to take advantage of the new county system and regional opportunities (East Central and Southern Africa)
The new county system will provide a new impetus to the need for post offices as a central location for accessing and disseminating information to the county citizens.  Applications for passports, driving licenses and the like will be decentralised to the counties who would then need a cost effective way to receive and send out the documents.

With the registered mail service sensitive information can be safely delivered thus reducing the opportunities for corruption and lack of accountability.  On Tuesday PS Angote was complaining about the thousands of title deeds lying uncollected at Arthi House, a situation that has arisen by a lack of clear procedures for delivery of the documents.  

All that the Ministry needs to do is send out all completed documents to the provided postal address, this also helps to confirm the address to which the land rent demand notes will be sent to, the registrar of motor vehicles has always sent log books through the postal system why not the titles.  

However much you would like to convince ourself that a title deed is worth more than a car please note that a lot of land that is transacted in the country costs less than 500,000/- so if we can entrust the postal service with a log book for a car worth 15 million what is a title deed for a plot worth 150,000/-.

PCK still remains one of the only ways to get mail and parcels to the hinterland of the region from Mandera to Mbeya and Arua to Lindi all at a fraction of the price of the next best. 
  1. What steps will you take to transform Post Offices in far flung places into profitable centres?
When you are running a multi-locational organisation you must approach profitability in a holistic manner and not at individual locations.  Such errors in reducing your profit calculations to branch level without reconciling it to the whole organisation have been made with large organisations like Barclay's Bank who in the heydays of branched banking went on a spree of shutting down unprofitable branches around the country. 

Someone had taken a report showing profitability by branch and proceeded to close any branch that was not showing a profit.  Their error in judgement was only realised when someone noticed that closing of a branch in Meru resulted in a drop in profitability at the Queensway Branch.  What the analyst had not realised was that customers had accounts in both branches and would then bank the money in Nairobi then transfer it to the Meru Branch so as not to need to drive from Nairobi to Meru with cash.

The revenue for the transfer from Nairobi to Meru was realised and booked in the originating branch therefore giving the indication that one branch was more profitable than the other yet what they had was a symbiotic relationship.  

I would not want to make the same mistake with PCK as I am clear of the relationship between all branches in making sure that the entire organisation remains profitable.  The confidence you get when you send medicine to a parent in your far flung region using PCK will strengthen your confidence when sending a less sensitive item within the city resulting in increased loyalty.
  1. How will you encourage the public to troupe back to the Post Offices?
The public never left just a few of us who believe that the entire world moved electronic, even as we post the postal service in the most developed countries still continue to operate profitably yet they have technology penetrations higher than in Kenya.

We must not forget that even DHL continues to grow in leaps and bounds making snail mail deliveries, if email and SMS are instant then anything that takes longer than either of those services can be deemed slow.  Not all information can be delivered electronically in 90% of cases a physical item will need to be delivered even though the initial transaction was electronic.

PCK is the missing link in the supply chain for e-commerce, I will get you back to the post office but not necessarily physically as the final delivery will most likely be to your door.  Through PCK I shall level the divide that currently exists and continues to widen between you in Nairobi and a student in Lokitaung, the student at Nairobi University with access to multiple bookshops and libraries to one in Maseno with access to a single overpriced and understocked bookshop.

Regards

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 12:30 PM, robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

I have a few questions for you:

 

1.       How will you increase the corporation’s revenues (i.e. what innovations ill you bring on-board to revive the sleeping giant), in the backdrop of its main products such as snail mail in sharp decline over the years as a result of modern IC technologies?


- To increase revenue I will develop the parcel service mainly for local delivery an area that will receive a lot of resistance from the new entrants in the industry who I believe are working in the background to keep PCK asleep.  


I would like to give you a detailed reply on the ICT innovations I would want to implement but the current board and management could just pick on it and run thus loosing my strategic advantage.


2.       Do you see any conflict of interest in your role at Posta as a result of your past, current or future engagements with the corporation/elsewhere?


I see no conflict of interest


3.       What are your specific qualifications and experience that make you the best candidate for the role of PMG?


This question was answered before, this question if what has kept PCK where it is today as there is yet to be an institution which can train you on how to revive the organisation.  Dr. James Mwangi would never have seen the light of day during the recruitment of the MD of KCB yet he runs a more profitable organisation despite the lack of  "specific qualifications".


4.       With a bloated/redundant workforce at Posta; how will you transform the organization to a lean and productive enterprise without causing “political” and sometimes ethnic uproar that comes with down/right sizing such an organization?


PCK is understaffed for the direction I plan to take the organisation, a workforce is only deemed to be bloated when the organisation is unable to profitably utilise them.  


Orange has reduced the staff count from 21,000 to 1,500 finally yet there is no corresponding change in the bottom line.  The total wage bill for PCKs 4,500 employees is less than that of some organisations with less than 150 employees, if anything I will be looking at increasing the wage bill not reducing it especially at the bottom of the organisation as a way to increase moral and reduce the anxiety of lay-offs


We need to be weary of the culture of reducing staff count as a fad and look at making productive use of the staff.


Regards 

 

Best Regards,

 

Edwin M Onchari

0773711600

0720755951

eonchari@lynxbits.com

 

From: kictanet-bounces+eonchari=lynxbits.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+eonchari=lynxbits.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Odhiambo Washington
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 10:54 AM
To: Edwin
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Yawe for Post Master General - Aluta Continua

 

 

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 09:00, Joseph Mucheru <mucheru@google.com> wrote:

Hi Robert,

 

Thanks for sharing your ambitions. Am curious and if you don't mind (since you have made your intentions public) I would like to start preparing public interview questions before your appointment.

 

1: Why do you think you are more qualified than the existing management?

2: Other than existing infrastructure that Posta has, have you also looked at the debts of the corporation to see the worthiness of the business?

3: Why don't you create a new Posta? Raise capital and use a network of existing businesses in the country.

Am sure others can add more questions these are to start?

 

Hello Mucheru,

 

I am sure Yawe is well prepared to answer these, but what you have done is to turn the wheel back some months:)

Yawe already pitched his reasons to support his quest some months back and those reasons are in the archives of this list. I am still very convinced that he can pull it off, given his pitch, which is perhaps what you need to start by reading.

 

What we (and him) want is a PCK that works, is profitable and is the pride of Kenyans, much like the UK Postal system, or any other "functional" one you can refer to elsewhere.

 

Don't we all know why Posta is the way it is? We just want the Posta Posta with Robert Yawe at the help, to turn it round. There is no point creating a new one. Just changing the business model, the employee mindset, coupled with sound management practices should be enough, or so I think.

 

PS: Robert, on a positive note, I recently decided to bite the bullet and sent my 1.7kg parcel to Australia using EMS Kenya. It cost me KES 6,300 (as opposed to KES 14,000 which DHL wanted to charge) and guess what? It arrived in Oz in a record 4-working days!!

While they still don't have the Bumba boxes, it would appear that they are capable of delivering -  cheaply than the likes of DHL.

 


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