Few takers for job of postman

Singapore Post is finding it tough to recruit postmen to boost its staff strength.This could be due to the physically-demanding nature of the job, it said.According to its vice-president of corporate communications, Ms Tay Poh Choo, its attrition rate stood at about 15 per cent in the last two months.

During a recent recruitment drive, out of the 100-odd candidates who attended the job fair, only 10 applied for the postman's position, SingPost, of these, six were suitable when it was looking to fill 20 positions.

SingPost said it will continue with its recruitment and will venture outside of Singapore, to places such as Malaysia, China and the Philippines in order to hire suitable personnel to join the company.

Currently Singpost have about 1,000 postmen with the average age of 50.

SingPost said the expected delays are due to the recent severe weather conditions in Europe and the United States as well as the year-end festive peak volumes.

SingPost is working with airlines and other postal companies to make sure that the delays are minimised.

Also, additional manpower and staff have been engaged and deployed to help speed up the processing of all inbound and outbound articles and to secure additional airline space.

Comment:

Let me relate a problem with Singpost. Recently, a package i ordered through the internet was delivered to me when i was away. I missed a phone call from singpost as i was doing some important work. So, the package got sent back to Singpost HQ. I got another call for new delivery time at around 6pm. But I could not make it on the next day as i have to work. So, I instruct the package to be delivered to the nearest post office near my house and finally i pick it up the next day when i was free. Having being a postmen is a hard job as they would have to carry the responsibilities of keeping the package safe until it's delivered to the recipient. Along with Singapore's economy doing well this might be the reason why SingPost has been seeing a fall in the recruiting of postmen.

Lin Zong Han