The Government is exploring avenues to rescue the Ghana Post (GP) from the current financial and administrative challenges confronting its operations, the Deputy Minister of Communications, Dr Gideon Quarcoo, has assured. As part of the rescue plan, the Ministry of Finance has been advised to bail out the ailing postal service provider by releasing funds to pay the salaries and retirement benefits of the workers. In an interview in Accra, yesterday, after opening the second regional workshop on the new approach to postal services and administration for five English-speaking West African countries, Dr Quarcoo told the Daily Graphic that the government would not hesitate to look for a strategic investor to partner the GP if it became necessary. He said the focus of the government was to ensure that the GP became a vibrant and profitable organisation to provide the vital postal services to enhance communication in the country. According to Dr Quarcoo, the GP had the potential of becoming a viable entity if given the needed support and so the government would make sure that the organisation got the necessary push to harness its vast potential. Currently, the payment of the salaries of 2,600 workers of GP is in limbo following a judgement by the Accra High Court to freeze the accounts of the company to settle its indebtedness. Following the judgement, which was given on Monday, July 26, 2010, in favour of Sky Consult against the Ghana Post to pay GH¢2,400,OOO, the workers had appealed to the President to intervene by obtaining the stay of execution of the judgement, otherwise they would suffer hardship, including how to provide food for their families. Dr Quarcoo gave the assurance that the government would continue to support the Ghana Post to survive and save the workers from any moments of hardship. He called on the management of Ghana Post to exhibit some sense of duty, initiative and resourcefulness in the management of the company. In his speech to open the workshop being attended by participants from Ghana, Nigeria, The Gambia and Liberia, the Deputy Minister said the major commitment of the government in the postal sector was to ensure that all citizens of the country enjoyed access to the best possible universal postal service at the lowest possible price. He, therefore, urged the company to work towards the creation of an environment that was responsive to the promotion of increased competition in the industry for improve upon the quality of service, as well as to protect the clientele in the industry. He said it was obvious that today's environment demanded innovative ideas from businesses that wanted to survive, saying that the challenge was, therefore, for the company to take advantage of the wealth-creating capacities of those new systems to re-invent the postal business to become a winning enterprise. He also called on the Ghana Post to deliberate on the establishment of a national address infrastructure, which would entail the numbering of streets and homes to facilitate easy mail delivery. For his part, the Managing Director of the Ghana Post, Mr Abdulai Abdul-Rafiu, said the service was vigorously pursuing policies that would enable it to take advantage of information technology, including the computerisation of its operations and network across the country, to make it more efficient. He said major post offices in the country were to be connected to facilitate the tracking and tracing of all items, adding that due to the lack of Internet connectivity between the Accra North Post Office and the Central Post Office, registered letters and parcels currently could not be traced. He said that management would, with a new vision for the service through modem technologies and management, do all it could to do away with all bottlenecks that had in the past hindered the smooth operations of the company. The Director General of Universal Postal Union (UPU), Mr Edouard Dayan, said the new approach had the objective of using the postal network's vast infrastructure to promote the social economic development of the participating countries. A representative from the Pan-African Postal Union (PAPU), Mrs Olive Kanege, called on the participating countries to ensure that the needed steps were taken to improve on the postal industries in their various countries. A member of the board of the Ghana Post, Mr Kofi Nyantakyi, who chaired the programme, said consumers had become more assertive and, therefore, the time had come for the postal industry to brace itself to provide quality service. Source: Daily Graphic