Just two weeks ago Singapore Post (SingPost) apologised for its “service failures” over the year-end peak season, but the postal company is back in the limelight once again for negative publicity after undelivered mails were found in a dustbin at Ang Mo Kio.
Facebook user Alyce Kathlyn posted eight photos on Monday night (28 January), showing unopened letters from the government agencies like the Land Transport Authority, the National University of Singapore and the Ministry of Health’s Community Health Assist Scheme, all discarded in public dustbins.
The letters were addressed to some residents living in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 4 and 5.
Ms Kathlyn claimed that the postman had discarded the letters and parcels in the bin.
“This is not the first time we’ve found this in Ang Mo Kio,” she wrote in the Facebook post, which has garnered more than 170 comments and 7,000 shares.
As the post quickly went viral, SingPost sent a team to Ang Mo Kio on the same night to comb the area for the undelivered letters, but to no avail.
“The bin was located and the team expanded its search to every bin within the vicinity, with no success of locating the letters. Letter boxes were also opened to check if these letters had been delivered to affected recipients,” explained SingPost.
Since the letters were not found, SingPost’s customer service team tried getting in touch with Ms Kathlyn but did not receive a reply as it was late in the night.
The postman on duty is also being questioned, added SingPost.
On Tuesday morning (29 January), Ms Kathlyn responded to SingPost’s query and stated that the letters had been found at a dustbin in Blk 179 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5 and was placed at the nearest letterbox for residents to collect them.
She added that SingPost should have contacted her personally, instead of reaching out to her via her Facebook photo thread.
Shortly after Ms Kathlyn’s latest post, SingPost said it will be retrieving the letters immediately.
In December 2018, someone took to social media to point out how the how the delivery man didn’t bother waiting for him to answer the door before walking away. This post was followed by a deluge of complaints from other customers who had experienced similar issues of postal officers not even attempting to deliver a parcel but just leaving a note to say that the delivery attempt was unsuccessful.
After this news went viral, many netizens are furious at this incident and wondered how many times SingPost will apologise for their shortcomings.
To curb this issue, Rey Ong suggested that the government should open up postal service to more competitors and tender model. This is because SingPost is being the monopoly in the industry so the problems will keep coming as they don’t have much competitions.
On the other hand, Ling Ling Ling suggested that SingPost should engage part-timers during the festive season. However, they should allocate a leader cum driver who will drive them to the specific location and offload the letters to the said zone in a bath.
