Postal experts from Canada, France, Senegal and the United States will travel to Port-au-Prince in early April to help Haiti jumpstart its postal services, paralyzed since the January earthquake.
The international team will supervise the set up of a 600 m2 structure donated by the UPU on a site near the international airport. The experts will also help postal staff resume mail operations.
The structure will serve as the country’s new office of exchange for mail arriving in and leaving the country. Postal boxes will be installed for government mail and that of the many United Nations and humanitarian organizations based in the capital.
The UPU is using donated funds and money from its own budget to send the experts to the Caribbean country and purchase postal equipment and vehicles as part of a $300,000 emergency aid project.
Pledges keep coming in
Many Posts have pledged equipment and financial donations to Haiti Post. The USPS and Canada Post will send a dozen mail trucks and vans as well as sorting cases, mobile post offices and other equipment. The Caribbean Postal Union will send a generator. The Republic of Korea and Iran have donated $100,000 and $50,000 from their Quality of Service Fund credits. The Postal Union of the Americas, Spain and Portugal and the Posts of Argentina, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan and Portugal have also given money totalling more than US$175,000.
The UPU’s Telematics Cooperative is releasing Haiti from its debts and, for the next five years, will provide Haiti Post the application International Financial System (IFS) free of charge. IFS is used to manage electronic postal financial services, including money transfers.
Haiti Post’s director general, Margarette Emile, appreciates the show of solidarity. “No one thought the Post was such a tight-knit family,” said Emile. “Before [the catastrophe], the postal service was looked down upon. Today, the authorities see the Post differently and are starting to understand the important role it plays. We are at a decisive turning point in the postal life of Haiti.”
Not to be forgotten
The UPU has called on its mother organization, the United Nations, to put the postal infrastructure on the agenda at the second international conference on the rebuilding of Haiti, to be held in New York at the end of this month.
Also at the end of March, the UPU taskforce that coordinates worldwide offers of postal solidarity plans to meet in the Dominican Republic to discuss how to best help the Haitian Post modernize its operations.