Hypocrisy Hangs On NamPost Walls

IT appears your President’s appeal for the international aid community to classify Namibia as a least-developed country hasn’t fallen on deaf ears.

How else to explain the persistently third-rate services provided by NamPost? As a foreign national who’s been here for nearly two years, I’m still flabbergasted by the ineptitude demonstrated by your postal service. (After all, if you can’t handle the post efficiently, why not make banking, TV licensing, etc. an inefficient experience as well?) And while it’s not my intention to draw contrasts between Namibia and my home country, I can’t help but to point out at least one glaring difference between the two: the use of packing tape.It wasn’t till I arrived here that I realised tape was so essential to the postal service.”How nice,” I thought upon receiving a parcel from home, “they’ve reinforced the packaging.”It wasn’t till opening the parcel that I noticed the contents inside didn’t match the contents on the customs declaration.Many items were missing, and this type of theft has occurred repeatedly since then.I’m in my mid-20s, so excuse my faulty memory, but I don’t recall this sort of thing ever happening with the post at home.Never has my post arrived sliced open and hastily taped together, at least not before I took up residency in Namibia.As far as my forced relationship with NamPost goes, I can excuse the arbitrary tea breaks taken by employees while the queue snakes out the door; I can understand that it takes three weeks to send a letter from Ondangwa to Gobabis (if it even gets there); and I can understand that the post office is more likely not to have stamps than it is to have them; but I can’t possibly understand what type of organisation allows for the rampant theft of private correspondence.I understand that protocol dictates the CEO or President or Supreme Leader, or whatever the head of NamPost is called now, offers a response in which his ghost writer defends his organisation’s poor levels of service and then appeals for patience as he tries to build NamPost into a world-class organisation (as if 16 years hasn’t been enough time to engender a staff that doesn’t filch).To save your secretary time, don’t offer a response unless it addresses the following questions: * What is the interview process like for a NamPost applicant? I’m particularly interested in any performance simulations that measure the time it takes potential employees to identify an alluring parcel, rip it open, pilfer any sort of valuable, and then repackage the violated parcel with nearly a kilogram of tape.Also, do employees have to conceal stolen items or do they walk freely and openly out the door because “that’s just what we do”? * Is NamPost willing to reimburse the sender for postage costs? Aside from the value of stolen objects, the person posting the parcel pays for the weight of shipment.If money is paid for the delivery of a 10 kg parcel, and only 7 kg make it to the recipient’s post box, who rightfully deserves the cost of those lost 3 kilograms? * What sort of controls do you have in place to prevent theft? I don’t mean what type of controls you’ve discussed implementing, or what sort of controls are in place but nobody pays much attention because they’re rarely enforced, or even what types of controls you’d like to have but just don’t have the resources to do so.I mean what controls do you have in place right now at the ground level to prevent this sort of thing from happening? If you have none, you have none, and at least I understand why it’s possible for so many of my things to be stolen by virtue of the racket set up within your organisation.* Can you provide me with one of those ‘As a NamPost employee, I have zero tolerance for inefficiency, corruption, etc’ posters that hang in many of your offices? I want to bring your hypocrisy home and hang it on my wall.As an aside, I apologise for signing this letter anonymously, but I speak as an individual, and I don’t wish to compromise the relationship between the organisation for which I work and the country that hosts us.Namibia is an amazingly beautiful place, and aside from NamPost and chicory in the coffee, I’m proud to call your country my second home.Angry Customer Via e-mail Note: Name and address provided – Ed(After all, if you can’t handle the post efficiently, why not make banking, TV licensing, etc. an inefficient experience as well?) And while it’s not my intention to draw contrasts between Namibia and my home country, I can’t help but to point out at least one glaring difference between the two: the use of packing tape.It wasn’t till I arrived here that I realised tape was so essential to the postal service.”How nice,” I thought upon receiving a parcel from home, “they’ve reinforced the packaging.”It wasn’t till opening the parcel that I noticed the contents inside didn’t match the contents on the customs declaration.Many items were missing, and this type of theft has occurred repeatedly since then.I’m in my mid-20s, so excuse my faulty memory, but I don’t recall this sort of thing ever happening with the post at home.Never has my post arrived sliced open and hastily taped together, at least not before I took up residency in Namibia.As far as my forced relationship with NamPost goes, I can excuse the arbitrary tea breaks taken by employees while the queue snakes out the door; I can understand that it takes three weeks to send a letter from Ondangwa to Gobabis (if it even gets there); and I can understand that the post office is more likely not to have stamps than it is to have them; but I can’t possibly understand what type of organisation allows for the rampant theft of private correspondence.I understand that protocol dictates the CEO or President or Supreme Leader, or whatever the head of NamPost is called now, offers a response in which his ghost writer defends his organisation’s poor levels of service and then appeals for patience as he tries to build NamPost into a world-class organisation (as if 16 years hasn’t been enough time to engender a staff that doesn’t filch).To save your secretary time, don’t offer a response unless it addresses the following questions: * What is the interview process like for a NamPost applicant? I’m particularly interested in any performance simulations that measure the time it takes potential employees to identify an alluring parcel, rip it open, pilfer any sort of valuable, and then repackage the violated parcel with nearly a kilogram of tape.Also, do employees have to conceal stolen items or do they walk freely and openly out the door because “that’s just what we do”? * Is NamPost willing to reimburse the sender for postage costs? Aside from the value of stolen objects, the person posting the parcel pays for the weight of shipment.If money is paid for the delivery of a 10 kg parcel, and only 7 kg make it to the recipient’s post box, who rightfully deserves the cost of those lost 3 kilograms? * What sort of controls do you have in place to prevent theft? I don’t mean what type of controls you’ve discussed implementing, or what sort of controls are in place but nobody pays much attention because they’re rarely enforced, or even what types of controls you’d like to have but just don’t have the resources to do so.I mean what controls do you have in place right now at the ground level to prevent this sort of thing from happening? If you have none, you have none, and at least I understand why it’s possible for so many of my things to be stolen by virtue of the racket set up within your organisation.* Can you provide me with one of those ‘As a NamPost employee, I have zero tolerance for inefficiency, corruption, etc’ posters that hang in many of your offices? I want to bring your hypocrisy home and hang it on my wall.As an aside, I apologise for signing this letter anonymously, but I speak as an individual, and I don’t wish to compromise the relationship between the organisation for which I work and the country that hosts us.Namibia is an amazingly beautiful place, and aside from NamPost and chicory in the coffee, I’m proud to call your country my second hom
e. Angry Customer Via e-mail Note: Name and address provided – Ed