On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 8:15 PM, robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Hi,

It is saddening to see how Postal Corporation is treated as a dumping ground for retired civil servants turning it into a sedated giant being denied the opportunity to play its rightful role in levelling the playing field.

Many of us think that just because we rarely receive snail mail that it serves no purposes, we write articles and make statements of how email and instant messaging are the final nail in the coffin of Posta but I ask after your order the pair of shoes online and pay via mpesa or mkesha how do you expect to receive the shoes? SMS, email, or IM.

I believe that we are doing a disservice to the country by killing Posta and someone needs to stand up and put Posta back to where it belongs as the enabler for e-commerce, e-learning, narrower of the digital divide and governance.

I therefore offer myself as a candidate for Post Master General of Postal Corporation of Kenya.

Over the weekend (on Sunday), I needed to call KPLC Call Centre. This was prompted by the incidence of having been without Electricity from Friday to Sunday. To call the KPLC call centre, they always require you to specify your account number, which prompted me to retrieve on my electricity bills for reference. Guess what I saw on the bill?? on the top right hand corner was a stamp (sort of) reading "Kenya Postage Paid" (or something close). So I asked myself the question: If KPLC has to post electricity bills every month to all it's customers, how much revenue does that translate into for what I'd love to call KPTC (sic)?? There are so many entities that use Posta, like KRA, and all those organizations which still insist on snail mail. So there is still need to retain Posta for it's services. Even in the developed world (US, UK, etc) they still use Postal services. If anyone wants to "kill" Posta, then I must ask why?

Posta is probably just killing itself. Ineptitude, inefficiency, unreliability. There was a point in time when no one trusted their mail would get to the destination when dispatched via KPTC. When it was transformed to Posta, things seemed to "want to change", but they did not quite - not as much as expected. By the time this was happening, several courier companies had been formed, and "licensed". I don't know who did this, but what comes to mind is that someone saw a void that needed to be filled. Posta was becoming irrelevant, if you get what I mean, because this was their service being taken away from them. There are historical reasons behind Posta's poor service delivery, the most outstanding being corruption. Now corruption in Kenya is facing its waterloo, because of the new katiba. Maybe now is the time to have Posta being run professionally as a business outfit, not as a govt dumping ground for civil service rejects and political cronies.

Is Posta under the docket of Dr. Bitange Ndemo? Perhaps he can tell us if he has any plans of turning Posta around. Posta, like our Police Service needs reforms, and that has to start with staff attitude and behavior. Do you know how Posta recruits those staff who serve at the counters? I swear I've never seen any adverts for such positions all my life. New blood needs to be injected into Posta to make in functional. If you feel you can do this, then why not? Major General Ali can be given a diplomatic assignment so that you take over at the helm of Posta. We'll give you two years from the date of your appointment to show us what you have achieved, or show cause why you shouldn't be either taken to court (depending) or be shown the door.