RIYADH, 7 February 2006 — Thousands of mailboxes are being installed in residential buildings in different parts of the capital as part of Saudi Post’s novel plan to enable the people to send and receive mail from their own residential buildings without going to the post office.
“We are installing 6,000 boxes a day in Riyadh and Jeddah respectively as part of our plan to distribute five million boxes throughout the Kingdom over a two-year period,” Usamah Altaf, vice president of Saudi Post, told Arab News. He said the next phase of the campaign would see similar installation in the Eastern Province in the first quarter of this year.
Saudi Post has already distributed subscription forms to the inhabitants of residential buildings inviting them to benefit from the manifold advantages of Wasel, its delivery and pick-up postal service. The number of mailboxes in each building depends on the number of apartments therein. There is also a common box for the outgoing mail, to which postmen will have access through a common key.
These mailboxes, with state-of-the-art Radio Frequency Identification Technology chips embedded in them, are much more than a repository of mail and packages. They will play an important role in supporting the infrastructure required for e-commerce and e-government services, said Altaf.
He said one of the distinctive features of the chip embedded in each mailbox is that the recipient of the mail does not have to be physically present to acknowledge the receipt of registered and express mail and parcels. A digital stamp is recorded from the embedded chip along with a record of time and date of the delivered mail.
“The RFIT chip will provide the equivalent of a digital signature on behalf of the recipient,” he said. “The chip will contain the subscriber’s data, which can be utilized for many other applications, including those relating to e-commerce and e-government.”
The mailboxes are of two types, single and clustered. In the second category, one of the boxes is for the outgoing mail and the rest for the incoming mail. The single mailbox consists of two compartments, one for receiving and the other for dispatching the mail.
He pointed out that the response to the scheme was highly encouraging, especially among those who are aware of the advantages of using these boxes for commercial purposes. Overall, corporate customers and professionals constitute a major segment of their clientele.
Altaf said that they were also preparing the infrastructure as part of their comprehensive plan to facilitate e-commerce and e-government services in the Kingdom.
“One of the reasons for the slow growth of e-governance in Saudi Arabia was the lack of a robust postal infrastructure in the Kingdom. This was preventing the delivery of goods and packages to a customer wishing to place orders via the Internet.”
The installation of mailboxes in these buildings, he pointed out, would make it possible for citizens and expatriates to do shopping online and find the products delivered to their addresses or dropped in their mailboxes in their own building.
