By Eleanor Gee

Tonga’s postal service was established in 1887 and today Tonga Post, along with postal services worldwide, celebrated World Post Day, 9 October, to highlight their work and its contribution to social and economic development.

World Post Day has been celebrated since 1969 to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Universal Postal Union in 1874. It was established to create and maintain a postal system to ensure the flow of mail around the world. The Union became an agency under the United Nations in 1948.

To mark the day, Tonga Post CEO Mr ‘Alipate Tavo told Matangi Tonga the theme this year is to hold activities for students.

“For us in Tonga, we looked at promoting Tonga Post as a place for future careers for youth.”

They invited Form Seven students to visit their offices in Tongatapu and Vava’u, so they could see the work  in areas such as post, print, or money transfer and  IT with the introduction of new electronic mail systems and addressing.

Tonga Post also gave away gifts to their customers throughout the day.

Adapting to technology

The postal service has embraced technology to improve the delivery of mail. Electronic systems are used now to track each mail item from when they are posted to arrival at its final destination.

‘Alipate said scanning outgoing postal items alerts the postal service at the receiving end and “alerts them that mail is coming and what type of mail to expect”.

He said before this system, everything was written down manually.

Tonga Post is adapting to e-commerce with more and more people purchasing goods online in Tonga.

“We are doing a lot of work on accommodating e-commerce. We are setting up a new system so products are delivered quickly,” said ‘Alipate.

“There are no street addresses in Tonga and to receive mail, residents have to register a post office box with Tonga Post to be able to collect mail, either over the counter, or from a 24 hour access post office box lobby.

“Alternatively, people can just register with us [e-box] and we can deliver mail directly to that person’s office or home.”

He said when registering, people had to give very detailed information so the postal workers could find their homes or offices when delivering mail. Most people used prominent landmarks to describe where their homes are located.

Three words addresses

Tonga Post is looking at implementing an addressing system for all homes in Tonga to speed up delivery.

The 3-word address, developed by What3Words [2], was trialed over a number of years in areas such as Hofoa and Puke, but according to ‘Alipate, it stopped because of a lack of funding and the project couldn’t cover all of Tonga.

“But we are going to revive the project, and this technology uses satellite,” he said.

What3Words has divided all countries in the world into a grid system. Each 3m square in the world has a name, three unique random words in English that will never change. As an example, What3Words headquarters address in London is filled.count.soap. As an example on the What3Words map, it recognises Nuku'alofa, Tonga as lifetime.liquids.muffled.

“So, every grid in Tonga would have a different name as an identifier,” said 'Alipate.

However consultations with the public during the earlier trial period revealed that Tongans didn’t agree with the naming system because it was in English and because it used random words.

“They wanted to use Tongan words that would identify their suburb and their street,” he said.

Tonga Post is working with an IT company to look at changing the three words from English to Tongan.

“Nobody in Nuku’alofa will want the word ‘Utulau as one of their words so it has to be words that would relate to people living at that address. And that’s a big job thinking about that.”

“It’s a tricky task but IT is working on it to make it more relevant for Tongans. Once the IT work is done, then we can look at implementing it."

However ‘Aliptae said IT is aiming to finish the work by the end of the year but in the meantime, “with or without addresses, we can still deliver mail”.