KUCHING, Sept 3 — Pos Malaysia has increased its delivery flight frequency to East Malaysia by engaging cargo flight services since the middle of April, said Deputy Minister of Communications and Multimedia Datuk Zahidi Zainul Abidin.
“By using cargo flights, the capacity of cargo transportation has been increased from 200 tonnes a week from before the implementation of movement control order to over 510 tonnes a week currently,” said Zahidi.
He also pointed out the Pos Malaysia, the nation’s postal service provider, had increased its workforce with the addition of 1,300 part-time personnel to speed up parcel processing in its centres across the country.
From the new addition of workforce personnel, 30 per cent of the newly hired were in Sabah and Sarawak, he added.
“To increase the capacity for parcel deliveries to the recipients, Pos Malaysia has also increased the number of delivery agents via its Pos Rider programme, an initiative under the Pos Malaysia Transformation Plan,” he said in a reply to Senator Robert Lau of the Sarawak United Peoples’ Party (SUPP) in Dewan Negara today.
Zahidi told explained that the national postal service provider had experienced a drastic surge in the volume of parcels to be processed and delivered, ranging from 600,000 to 800,000 parcels a day from its capacity of only 300,000 to 400,000 parcels a day.
“The Covid-19 pandemic and the enforcement of the movement control order (MCO) had caused many customers to shift their shopping habit to the digital world, which resulted in a high volume of parcels that needed to be processed by Pos Malaysia,” he said.
Zahidi also remarked that the implementation of MCO had caused many commercial air transport companies to cancel their flights to Sabah and Sarawak, resulting in immediate impacts on its delivery capacity to Easy Malaysia and causing a delay in sending out parcels.
Nonetheless, he said the national’s national service provider had implemented the Pos Malaysia Transformation Plan since 2019 in order to improve their level of services, including expanding touchpoints, enhancing processing and delivery capacity via crowdsourcing and greater focus on e-commerce. — Borneo Post
