The Managing Director of Ghana Post, Bice Osei Kuffuor, after his appointment in late 2021, promised to revive the once vibrant post service provider to compete with private companies.
However, an experience The Chronicle encountered with the company that touts itself as the nations’ postal service company seems to show that the rebranding promised never took place.
On Wednesday August 24, 2022, this reporter was handed an invitation by her Editor to attend a workshop put together by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for some selected media houses.
Per the invitation, the EPA set aside Thursday, August 18 as the day for the workshop for these media personnel, but The Chronicle received its invitation through the Express Mail Service (EMS) of the Ghana Post on August 24, four days after the slated time for the event.
This error was not because the EPA did not engage the services of Ghana Post on time. In fact, the receipt from the Ghana Post that accompanied the EPA’s letter indicates that the Agency engaged the services of Ghana Post on August 12, 2022 at 01:10:03pm at a GH¢50 charge.
In order to ascertain the procedure by which parcels are delivered in and outside Accra, and to confirm if documents sent through Ghana Post take much time to be delivered, this paper placed a call to Ghana Post Head Office.
A Customer Service representative at the Head Office, who gave her name as Gifty, explained to this reporter that a parcel, which is supposed to be delivered in the region in which it was sent, takes 24 hours to be delivered, while that which is moving from one region to the other takes 72 hours.
Madam Gifty told this reporter that the only situation in which a parcel sent from Accra and was to be delivered in another vicinity in the city would delay till the next day would be a result of the time the services of the GP was engaged.
Giving a scenario, Gifty told this reporter that when a customer in Accra wants a parcel delivered to another person in the same city, but engages the services of GP at 3:00pm, the recipient was likely to receive the item the next day due to the time.
She assured this paper that, there was no way a parcel would delay for more than two days.
“No! Not within Accra! No! No! No! It is not possible!” Madam Gifty assured this reporter.
Based on this reporter’s experience, and the explanation from Madam Gifty, criticisms rained on Ghana Post by some Ghanaians, including entertainment critic, Amandzeba Phiiphi Smyth, that the supposed rebranding was just for the cameras and could not be true, is justified.
Amandzeba said that the ‘VIP parcel service’ was more effective than Ghana Post, because he sent a laptop to his children in Kumasi through Ghana Post, and it took one week and three days for the items to be delivered. He was speaking in an interview on radio based on his experiences, in which he remarked that Ghana Post was not as efficient as it was being portrayed.
Aside the inefficiency, others have noted that transacting business with Ghana Post was more costly than engaging the services of private firms.
The amount the EPA was charged for delivering a letter to this paper was GH¢50. The letter delivered to the Editor of The Chronicle indicates that 26 media houses and five media stakeholder organisations, including the Ghana Institute of Journalism, were suppose to receive a copy each.
This means that the EPA spent not less than GH¢1,550 in their quest to ensure that all these media houses and media organisations received its invitation to enable them attend the programme.
But if the EPA had engaged the service of private parcel delivery firm, it would have paid less, because sending a document via such mediums usually attracts a GH¢10-20 charge.
