‘Priority mail’ not priority

What does “priority mail” mean to the Philippine Postal Corp.? Does it not mean that this kind of mail should be prioritized for delivery? Or is “priority mail” merely a means to collect more revenues for the salaries and allowances of postal employees? But how come until now, postal employees remain poorly paid, and their allowances, if any, are often delayed? But that is beside the point. My complaint is about the priority mail that is not given any priority at all by Philpost personnel, presumably because of the low salaries they are getting.

On Aug. 1, 2011, I mailed at the Daet postal office a document in a sealed envelope marked “priority mail,” for which service I paid P70 in the belief that it would reach the addressee in a nearby province, within five days. However, after eight days the addressee called me up saying he had yet to receive the mail. Must it really take eight days or more for priority mail to reach its addressee?

This reminds me of an incident some years back when a registered letter from Manila was delivered to me after a month. When I inquired from the Daet post office how this was possible, they gave as reason for the delay the strike that the post office drivers in Manila staged due to low wages. Later, however, I came to know that there was no such strike. And if I remember right, a postmaster general in the 1980s implemented the so-called “Mercury” or swift mail delivery service which successfully worked to the satisfaction of both the senders and addressees. Can’t this service be revived to replace “priority mail” which, more often than not, is not given priority at all?

In my case, how would the PhilPost explain the delay given the fact that my priority mail was sent to a person living in a nearby province?

Worse, a Christmas greeting card from our daughter Clarisse P. Ken in Florida mailed in December 2010 never reached us, to her chagrin. But I did not complain because it was useless to do so in those days, during the reign of the despised Arroyo administration, when doing so could expose an ordinary citizen to the risk of being accused of inciting to sedition, by the justice secretary then.

—GODOFREDO O. PETEZA SR.,

Barangay Camambugan,

Daet, Camarines Norte 4600