Adhering to standards imperative

There are certain international standards that post offices across the world have to adhere to and the General Post Office in Barbados is one of them.

This is according to Acting Deputy Postmaster General, International Postal Affairs and Business Development at the General Post Office (GPO), Iris Lashley, who spoke with The Barbados Advocate on the sidelines of an EAD and EMSEVT V3 Compliance for Express Mail Service (EMS) Workshop held yesterday at the GPO.

She stated that there are regulations and information that keeps changing and it is important that staff keep up-to-date with these changes if they are going to do their job efficiently and provide the best possible customer service to the citizens of this island.

“We have many regulations and information that keeps changing and we have to ensure that we are familiar with what we have to do. We have to avail ourselves of all the information – all the documents that we are supposed to be up-to-date with. We have to be very familiar with them and apart from that, we have to ensure that customer service is paramount because obviously within the post office, there are things that we would know and that we would be dealing with. However, we have to be able to communicate to the customers what is required of them and also ensure that the service that we give is very efficient and to ensure that as they work and do business with us, that they are able to guarantee that their packages and their items arrive at the required time.”

Lashley continued by stating that being in the region does not exempt them from following these standards and therefore, it is important for the hands-on employees to know about these criteria.

“Even though we are operating here in Barbados and in the Caribbean region, there are standards that are set throughout the world and we have to reach them and maintain them and therefore we have to operate under the performance standards and we are paid according to the standards, whether we have reached them or whether we have not been able to achieve them. So we are looking also at electronic means as to how we would conduct business in exchanging the express mail items and we are looking at introducing at least one of the applications which would allow us here in Barbados, we send off items, to enter those items so that the receiving countries can know what is coming… And then when we are on the other end where persons are sending express mail items to us, we can see what is coming so that the things can actually be examined before they touch down on Barbados.”