JEDDAH, 18 July 2006 — Residents of major Saudi cities will now be able to have the added luxury of having their mail delivered to and sent from their doorsteps in an initiative that will soon cover the whole of Saudi Arabia.
Muhammad Saleh Benton, president of the Saudi Postal Corporation (SPC), has announced that the new service, called Wassel, will be launched at the beginning of the year as promised. He said the service is now available on subscription in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam.
Benton added that the process of installing mailboxes at residential and commercial buildings, which took one year, has recently finished paving the way for a revolutionary new postal service.
Two types of mailboxes have been installed on residential buildings, one for villas and another for apartments. Both types include electronic chips that send signals to SPC offices detailing their locations. Moreover, subscribers will also be offered free Internet to inform the SPC whenever they have mail ready to be sent.
Similar to the European and American satellite navigation systems, the chips will also be used by the civil defense and the Red Crescent to electronically locate destinations within Saudi cities. The new system will be called “Saudi Navigator”.
SPC says that operators will now be taking subscription requests from interested residents via telephone. Flyers will also be distributed to residents explaining the new services that are now available.
Speaking to Arab News, Benton said the postal service now has its own carrier and does not rely on third-party couriers. Benton added that in future there might be a possibility for such couriers to work for SPC.
Benton explained that SPC now has 6,123 branches in the Kingdom and has become the leading postal service provider in Saudi Arabia. “We have 9,308 employees who are striving to improve services,” he added.
Benton also spoke about SPC’s express delivery service called EMS, which aims at delivering shipments within one day to addresses in the Kingdom and two days to addresses in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
Benton mentioned that in order to gain the trust of customers, SPC would implement an insurance coverage of up to SR35,000 to ensure the security of postal articles.
SPC employees are being put through training courses teaching them how to improve customer services, and make them aware of work ethics.
