A new challenge for Cameroon Postal Service

A new page is expected to open for the Cameroon Postal Service, CAMPOST, following the change in management on July 7, 2016. The country's State postal service provider has for the past six years been under the management of the French, sequel to the agreement between Cameroon and SOFREPOST in 2010.

By opting for SOFREPOST after Tecsult, a Canadian firm, government aimed at reforming the sector that was already in the black books of most customers with regard to financial transactions and service delivery. The agreement supposedly came as a panacea but years on, government is still longing for a performing company, following customers' loss of trust.

The new management team under Pierre Kaldadak therefore has a huge task, given that the country has over the years become a major playground in postal activities, with private sector actors seizing ever growing opportunities to maintain their grip on customers who are exigent on time and safety.

Innovative technology has also come to play a major part in the game, with private actors seizing every opportunity. These and more may be the missing link of the country's lone State postal operator, with recurrent complaints of poor and archaic services.

The stakes are therefore high for the new management team, with the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Minette Libom Li Likeng, insisting that the good old days must be reinstated. Restoring confidence and trust in the company is a pre-requisite to reviving activity.

Minette Libom Li Likeng said while installing Pierre Kaldadak that it was time Cameroonians started saving and carrying out financial operations at CAMPOST like in the days of old, stressing that "CAMPOST must be a performing company to the State and users."

The influence of the digital economy on almost all sectors of development can no longer be underestimated, with CAMPOST obliged to dance to the tune of the piper. The company in March this year partnered with an e-commerce platform to provide facilities to online shoppers in some 24 localities that are far off big cities.

The partnership focuses on the collection, transportation and delivery of goods to customers with the aim of facilitating e-commerce, improving digital literacy among locals as well as having one of the broadest offers of products in Cameroonian e-commerce market.

The move has been praised, but government wants more, stressing that it needs more jobs and income. Financially and technically, revamping the company is therefore a top priority, as government seeks to give it a new and agreeable face.

The holding of a seminar today July 12, 2016, with focus on improving Express Mail Service delivery, EMS, by postal operators in Africa on the sidelines of the Ninth Ordinary Session of the Plenipotentiary Conference of the Pan-African Postal Union running till July 25, 2016, in Yaounde, is telling of the commitment to reform the postal services in Africa, Cameroon not exempted.

The need to adapt to changing times is therefore urgent, as stakeholders fine-tune ways of giving back to customers what they deserve.