Monday October 10, 2016
Kabul (BNA) World Post Day is celebrated each year on 9 October.
The event was declared by the 1969 Universal Postal Congress in Tokyo as a means to mark the anniversary of the Universal Postal Union’s (UPU) creation in 1874. The purpose of the World Post Day is to bring awareness to the Post’s role in everyday lives of people and businesses, and its contribution to global social and economic development. On this day the national winners of the participating countries of the UPU international Letter Writing competition are honored. The national postal services celebrate this event by organizing national Letter Writing competitions, awareness programs, Issuing commemorative stamps, lounging new postal products and services and other postal promotional activities. As a result, the UPU’s member countries are encouraged to organize their own national activities to celebrate the event, including everything from the introduction or promotion of new postal products and services, to the organization of open days at post offices, mail centers and postal museums.
The UPU helps facilitate awareness with its World Post Day by designing and distributing posters for display across the globe. In 2016, the UPU launched a new poster for the 2016–2018 period. Although World Post Day is not guided by a particular theme, the UPU’s latest poster design embodies the UPU’s three strategic pillars: innovation, integration and inclusion. Afghanistan got membership of UPU in 1928 during the kingdom of Amri Sher Ali Khan and the first post office was established in Kabul’s Bala Hesar. Later on, the post services were expanded in various regions of the country. In 1955, the post department in Afghanistan started operations within the administrative structure of Ministry of Telecommunication and then post services started nationwide services. Based on the statistics of Ministry Communication and Information Technology MCIT, today nearly 80 percent of the banks, 15 percent of the business firms and 5 percent of the families use the post services in the country. The MCIT has established 465 post offices and more than 10,000 post boxes across the country which operates in accordance to international standards.
Alongside the government run Afghan Post department, there are dozens of private postal companies that operate around the clock in the country and send the parcels and letters to the targeted destinations within 72 hours. Among the private companies DHL, PMT, FEDEX and Bakhter which are among the top postal companies in the country. Despite the advancement of Information Technology (IT) and internet, cell phones and other means of communications, the post services still keep prominent reputation in all countries of the world and many countries receive major financial resources from the post industry. Currently, security threats are among the major barriers on way of post services in Afghanistan which needs to curb to expand post services. The militants should also realize that the post service is only to convey message from one human to another. If the insurgents target the post services, then it is considered a major act of oppression and atrocity against the human community.
Karima Malikzada