Correo Argentino is the only national company located in every municipality of the nation and has the largest logistics network in all of Argentina. This makes the Post the ideal partner for the large-scale federal operation carried out every decade – the national census.
“The mission of the post office is to give the same opportunity to use postal services to all the inhabitants of the country regardless of where they live, in accordance with this we take to every corner of the country the materials to census all the inhabitants of the national territory,” said Diego Momdjian, Director of Innovation and Technological Development.It is a monumental task that affects hundreds of workers, requires hundreds of vehicles, and involves the handling of hundreds of thousands of boxes to complete the task, yet it’s a project the Post has done in the past and will do again in the future, Momdjian said.
“We believe that for the year 2030, the Post will continue to provide the project with all the logistical experience to transport the necessary elements and technology in line with what will be used in the future,” he said.
The effort wasn’t without its challenges.
While preparations for the 2020 census began in 2019, with pilot programs run in several regions, work was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the schedule resumed in May 2021, with an experimental census and the full National Household and Housing Census 2020 taking place between December 2021 and May 2022.
Correo Argentino managed logistics for this effort from its plant in Tortuguitas, exclusively employing almost 300 workers in three production shifts from March through May.
The work included assembly of 460,000 boxes of various sizes containing elements required for census tasks, including library items, COVID-19 kits, questionnaires, and other forms, Momdjian explained.
Items were deployed from 6,500 census radius points throughout the country using 1,200 transports with 26 intermediate plants and 3,000 collaborators.
But the job wasn’t just disseminating the materials.
Once the census was finished, boxes containing completed forms were collected from each of the 6,500 distribution points and transported to the intermediate plants, placed on pallets, and delivered to the logistics plant in Tortuguitas for storage until they could be sent for digitization.
After digitization, the Post will carry out the final disposal of all documentation.
“Correo Oficial de la República Argentina S.A. is the national company with the most branches throughout Argentina and the best geographical dispersion, therefore, it is the only one in a position to reach every corner of the Republic, an operation of this magnitude requires experience and operational capacity to carry it out,” Momdjian said.
“The synergy between the company and the provincial agencies supporting INDEC's (The National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina) actions made it possible to carry out the successful operation.”