Emirates Post to offer doorstep delivery by 2012

POSTAL PLAN: Emirates Post said it was handling at least 500,000 letters each day. (Getty Images)

UAE’s Emirates Post aims to offer a complete home-delivery service by 2012, according to a newspaper report.

The service will pinpoint residential post boxes with a global positioning system, a report in The National daily said. Accordingly, letterboxes will be built in apartments, offices and shelters near residences, with the location of each box built onto a digital map to assist the postal department staff, it added.

To facilitate such services, Mana Al Suwaidi, marketing director of Emirates Post, told the daily: “We are going to open more offices, and install more PO boxes.”

The newspaper reported that recently, the company bought two mail sorting machines for its Ramoul centre, which sort an average of 72,000 letters per hour. Both are equipped with 360 stackers, so mail can be distributed directly to a local branch within 24 hours, it added.

Two months back, Emirates Post opened its 100th office, a century after the first post office was built in what is now the UAE.

It is often difficult for people in the UAE to locate a building and have to reply on landmarks and major roads. But the introduction of the GPS system will eliminate such confusions.

Since it was issues like these – of finding streets and building numbers that made postal deliveries difficult, Al Suwaidi says that the organisation is fast trying to make the dream of doorstep delivery, a reality.

However, the efforts of Ras al Khaimah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi in implementing street name and numbering projects, will have no bearing on Emirates Post’s plans, he added.

“An important aspect of the project itself is to go and physically mount PO boxes. So we need to co-ordinate co-ordinateords, with property developers and designers to make sure they will accommodate certain areas for PO boxes to be installed,” he told The National.

Emirates Post said it was handling at least 500,000 letters each day, which rose to more than a million during the Christmas season, the daily added.

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READERS' COMMENTS

GPS Vs. Simple Street Re-naming
Posted by Stephen, Dubai, UAE on Saturday 9 May 2009 at 08:19 UAE time


I wonder if anyone at Empost has realised this, but if the streets here had full names and not 9d, 13b or 12d, etc, this would be so simple. Here, theres probably a road 12 c in Al Quoz, in Al Qusais, and probably somewhere else in Dubai..

All you need is a proper street naming system in place, then you don't need GPS to point out where people are. It will cost a lot more to get the GPS system in place and register all the peoples addresses physically into the GPS computer system as opposed to just changing the street names all over the UAE.

In addition, when people move or addresses change you will have to go to Empost and give your new GPS coordinates. You would not need this if you had a proper street address.. plus, if you get a proper street naming system in place in the UAE, then it will make cartography easier and better maps with more information could be commonplace here, and navigation would be by street name and not landmarks.

Just an idea..in these tough economic times, cheaper is always better, especially if you can yeild the same results with less resources.

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