BotswanaPost to launch world-class mail sorting center.

BotswanaPost's International Mail Exchange Centre will transform Botswana's postal operations and raise them to world standards.

Briefing journalists yesterday ahead of the opening of new facility on Tuesday next week, the CEO of BotswanaPost, Pele Moleta, said the centre would also diversify the parastatal's revenue sources.  It will cut costs that have been incurred through the 'traditional' mode of sorting mail by hand. Upon arrival at the new centre, various mail will be sorted by automated equipment that has an operational capacity of 36, 000 mail items hour. The project cost P43 million. Moleta said the new machinery would render some of the services offered by manual sorters redundant, a development that would result in staff re-training and re-deployment. BotswanaPost currently sorts 3.5 million letters a month. Other benefits that will come with the new centre are linking up BotswanaPost to the international mail set-up, thus making mail delivery quicker. The project was commissioned by Festina Bakwena in 2009 when she was the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. In another ambitious effort later this year, BotswanaPost will launch a pilot project of house mail delivery in Gaborone and neighbouring villages like Odi and Matebele. Moleta said BotswanaPost had benchmarked in other SADC countries where the system was in practice and that the aim was to implement it nationwide if the pilot project was successful.
He told the media that BotswanaPost was in the process of refurbishing Poso House, its headquarters on Khama Crescent on Government Enclave in Gaborone, adding that the move would help generate more income by leasing out office space. 

Source; Mmegi Online, March 20, 2011