A NEW LOOK: Office of Foreign Post at George Town. — Photo: K. Pichumani

CHENNAI: The Chennai unit of Foreign Post, located near the General Post Office in George Town, no longer resembles a dungeon.

The three-storeyed building housing the office, where mailbags once used to be seen strewn around, is a picture of cleanliness.

Plants are kept on the ground floor and there is also a fish tank. Notice boards display news reports about the activities of the Postal department.

Quality statement

Furthermore, there is a "quality statement" printed on a board with signatures of the staff from the Director downwards appended to it. The "quality statement" broadly indicates the responsibility of postal officials towards their customers.

"These are only some of the improvements in the physical characteristics of our office. We have improved our functioning.

Better system of maintenance of records, installation of closed circuit television, establishment of customer care centre and more," says D.V. Mahesh, Director of Postal Services looking after the Foreign Posts and Marketing.

Pallet boxes have been provided to keep mailbags to ensure the FIFO (First In First Out) system. A hoist facility is to be set up to avoid manual handling of bags from one floor to another.

A health and fitness centre has been set up.

In the last one year, the office has been implementing 5S Japanese techniques, which broadly stand for house keeping practices for total quality management. "What was so far adopted in engineering organisations has been attempted in a mail processing unit," says Mr. Mahesh.

Despite an increase in the volume of foreign mail traffic, the number of complaints has come down considerably compared to last year, he adds.

The improvements are part of the preparatory process for getting ISO 9001:2001 certification.

Expressing the hope of securing the certification shortly, the Director says the improvements have all become a reality thanks to the encouragement from Chief Postmaster-General Radhika Doraiswamy and Postmaster-General Karuna Pillai and the cooperation of the workforce.

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