It was announced on Thursday, February 7, that Singapore’s national postal service, SingPost, will be receiving a penalty of S$100,000 from the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), due to SingPost’s failure to meet delivery standards of letters and registered mail in 2017.
The IMDA said that there were nine such occasions that year.
Furthermore, according to IMDA, “this was not the first instance that SingPost failed to comply” with its Quality of Service (QoS) standards.
“The recent service lapses by SingPost indicate gaps in SingPost’s processes and we require them to implement measures urgently to meet the public’s evolving postal needs,” said Aileen Chia, IMDA’s Deputy Chief Executive and Director-General (Telecoms & Post).
At the moment, the Authority is evaluating SingPost’s performance for 2018, and has said it will make the results known by mid-year.
It is compulsory for SingPost to submit reports to IMDA once every quarter under the Authority’s Postal Quality of Service standards, based on certain indicators including how timely the delivery of basic letters was, and how quickly outgoing letters were dispatched.
SingPost must deliver 99 percent of basic letters by the following working day after posting, and all of them in the span of 2 working days. Otherwise, they can face fines of as much as S$50,000 per month for every indicator.
SingPost has been in the news recently as its failures have been highlighted in social media. Late last month, a netizen posted on Facebook photos of mail and parcels in garbage cans in the Ang Mo Kio Ave 4 and 5 areas, resulting in the arrest of one SingPost mailman for his failure to deliver this mail.
Both a police investigation and one from the IMDA have been launched concerning the incident. The Authority further said that “firm action will be taken” since the action is a violation of the Postal Services Act, which states that it is an offense for “any officer, employee or agent of a postal licensee to destroy or throw away any postal article or anything contained therein”.
Read related: IMDA vows to go after SingPost after serious service lapses
https://theindependent.sg.sg/imda-vows-to-go-after-singpost-after-serious-service-lapses/