MPC: A vital giant challenged by technology

October 9 marks World Post Day and Malawi Post Corporation (MPC) needs new innovation to beat competition from mobile information communication technologies. JAMES CHAVULA writes.

The mention of Box 2 brings to mind images of a school famed for enviable pass rates and the students it ships to the country’s public universities.

However, the second name of Zomba Secondary School also pays homage to a mailbox which has been connecting the oldest Catholic school with the rest of the world for decades since its opening in 1942.

But the volumes of letters destined for Box 2 are on the wane. Peeping through the keyhole of the famous box at Zomba Post Office, the eye meets countable letters, leaving the box with sufficient space for dribs and drabs likely to come in the next two weeks.

“We saw it coming,” says Edwins Killowe, who enrolled at the school in 1999, four years after the introduction of mobile phones in the country.

Killowe adds: “When we were in Form One, the volumes were high and we could meet in the cafeteria around 10.15am to receive the letters from our loved ones—family and friends. However, the quantity had dwindled drastically by the time we reached Form Four in 2002. By then, a number of students had mobile phones and we were taking turns, calling our beloved ones at night.”

The clandestine calling sessions, after the night time studies at the school which prohibits students from owning mobile phones, usually coincided with the distribution of some more letters as well as the opening of those received earlier in the day.

And Killowe remembers that letters were more than just communication—a symbol of prestige without which one felt like a second-class citizen, a student without loved ones.

With time, however, the love letters had been disappearing, leaving behind a handful dominated by postcards carrying best wishes for students sitting examinations, celebrating birthdays and with sweethearts.

Unsurprisingly, it is the same downward spiral that greeted the Box 2 graduate and his contemporaries at The Polytechnic.

When he was selected to study Environmental Science and Technology at the University of Malawi college in 2003, the institution’s cafeteria had a corner dedicated to mailboxes labelled A-Z. From the doorstep, the power of the letter in a country still new to mobile phones was clear. Each box was bustling with mails, bills, bank statements, money telegrams and other massifs. The spills stuffed the table supporting the wooden boxes. There were always a hustle and bustle as students and support staff combed the heaps in search of their own.

Killowe, who comes from Phalombe, only took a break from the scramble for letters when he was in second year. He had bought his first phone. With it came the flexibility to deliver his message and get an instant response just by dialling the right number. With more and more students having portable phones, he left the college in December 2007 convinced that the letter was surely on course to become a thing of the past.

His fears were faultlessly confirmed when he returned to the college to study for a Bachelor’s degree in Procurement and Logistics two years later.

“Upon venturing into the café in 2009, I was stunned to see the big wooden box with mail compartments was nowhere in the corner. There were just a few letters on the table with little or no activity,” recounted Killowe, who graduated in 2011.

A return to The Polytechnic confirms MPC has an uphill task to change what Malawi Communication Regulatory Authority (Macra) director of postal services Lisa Msusa calls a widespread perception of postal services among people who cannot remember when they last sent or received a letter.

The good old wooden box is nowhere within the students’ reach. In an interview, some students called letter writing old-fashioned, almost dead and buried by handheld phones which guarantees them so much more at the click of the buttons. They phone users can communicate with their beloved through voice calls, short messages and social networking sites. A majority of the students were spotted with smart phones and tablets which enable them to share photos, videos and other snippets of their memorable moments via Internet.

Interestingly, even those with cheap phones can send and receive money through mobile money facilities rolled out by phone service providers TNM and Airtel. They can also check bank balances and pay bills using electronic banking facilities opened by banks.

For Killowe, the advent of mobile technologies should have jolted MPC to the hard truth: “Now, more than at any moment in its history, MPC needs to constantly do consumer research and reposition its services to suit the needs of its customers.”

Amid similar calls, MPC postmaster general Andrew Kumbatira admitted this during a staff training in May 2012 when he told 34 recruits there is need to be creative to revive the corporation.

He stated: “We are running on losses because most people are no longer writing letters with the advent of email, Twitter and Facebook…We need to move with time to win back the lost customers.”

According to him, moving with time means 900 MPC employees scattered in 179 post offices and 77 agencies need to be technologically conscious to surge into a paperless environment and fast-paced future.

This is akin to what Macra post services director Msusa believes.

“There is need to change the perception of postal services because technology presents opportunities to the postal sector,” she says.

The footprints of MPC’s efforts to innovate amid technological advancements are clear in most post offices where the State-run corporation also runs Internet cafes and FastCash money transfer schemes.

Additionally, it has partnered a variety of firms, including telephone network companies TNM and Airtel and Deutsche Post DHL and other firms to prop up its finances.

Despite the strides, MPC loses over K300 million (US$826 446) due to falling business, especially in rural areas.

“As a public postal service provider, we are under obligation to still deliver four letters to Marka in Nsanje even when we only make K400 (US$1.1) from the transaction. Because of this, we end up making losses of between K250 million (US$688 705) and K300 million annually,” he said.

The loss-making establishments include about 130 rural post offices which subsist on the profits from 50 urban and sub-urban outlets just as the corporation used to suck its telecoms and banking cousins which were weaned to become Malawi Telecommunications Limited (MTL) and Malawi Savings Bank (MSB) respectively.

For years, MPC even flirted with running a minibus service to offset the cost of serving the rural poor and government bailout to pay pensions of its former employees.

These signs of the hard financial times amid exponential technological breakthroughs offer more reasons the postal service needs to keep innovating even if trends show lowering levels of letters globally.