Behold, A New Nipost
By
Monday, January 22, 2007
Ibrahim Baba, postmaster general of Nigeria, is taking NIPOST through a process of transformation that makes its services efficient and reliable
By Sebastine Obasi
The Nigerian Postal Services, NIPOST, is undergoing transformation. Within the first quarter of this year, a number of the post offices are to go on-line so as to be able to fit adequately into an information technology-driven world.
Also, to checkmate the various cases of abandoned projects, the parastatal has secured the services of reputable consultants, who are to complete the buildings and put them into viable use on a Build, Operate and Transfer, BOT, basis.
That is not all. NIPOST has concluded plans to partner with Oceanic Bank International and Ecobank in its quest to redesign all the post offices in the country, to look customer-friendly. Pilfering of mails and parcels will soon be a thing of the past in all post offices. This is because, a mechanism has been put in place to track items from their points of despatch to their destinations, just as cameras are being installed in some post offices to check unwholesome tampering with items.
Ibrahim Baba, postmaster general, who reeled out these goodies, explained that in no distant time, all post offices across the country would be provided with computers as a prelude to linking them with Internet services. NIPOST has introduced Airpost express, which is a by-product of the Express Mail Service, EMS. The concept is such that people can have their items sent to their destinations within a space of six hours. The items are sent by air and delivered to their destinations based on the agreement reached with the sender. For now, Abuja and Lagos are being used under a pilot scheme.
Baba said NIPOST still had some challenges confronting it. Some of these include constant power supply, which is necessary to keep alive the dream of an IT-driven NIPOST and bad roads which make smooth movement of delivery vans difficult.
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