EITD Research

    Cameroon Public Utilities Forum

Post   

Postal services in Cameroon include ordinary or snail and express mail services; parcel handling and mail box or bag rentals; money transfer, savings and loans services, which now involve a number of companies. These include Cameroon Post (CAMPOST), Express Mail Service (EMS), some cooperatives, banks and transport agencies.

This notwithstanding, a number of specific problems are often expressed by customers. These include: frequent delays in mail delivery; tampering with mail (some torn mail, recurrent loss of mail, parcels, etc.); mailbox shortages; slow dispatch of mail, especially express and emergency mail; disorderly attendance to customer needs at service counters; impoliteness and delays in attending to customers, especially at service counters; late arrivals, in the mornings, of employees and consequent delays in services; frequent interruptions in service delivery; early closure of offices, before official closing times; and demands for additional money or side expenditures from customers for services.

For example, we approached the Express Mail Service (EMS) in Kumba on 14-04-08 to send a mail to the National Water Corporation (SNEC) in Kumba. We met a lady worker in the EMS office. She told us the service would cost 1000 FCFA, but we would have to give her taxi money to go to SNEC and also buy an envelop from her for the writs we wanted to serve SNEC. We told her we did not have taxi money to give her and that EMS provided us with an envelop the last time we used its service. She replied that EMS normally has envelops for customers but they were finished.  She had applied for more envelops and was waiting to receive them from EMS head quarters. In the meantime, she had envelops of her own to sell to customers. We begged her to consider our situation as we did not have money to buy her envelop. She stood up, went to the back office and returned with a brown A4 envelop, in which she put our writs. She then gave us an address coupon to fill. We did so with her help. She put glue on the coupon and carefully stock it on the envelop, ready for dispatch. She then brought out her receipt book and asked for the money. We produced the 1000 FCFA that we understood was needed. "No, where is money for the envelop?", she asked. We explained that we thought she had accepted our plea of not having envelop money. She refused. So we asked how much she was selling the envelop for. 200 FCFA was the answer. We wanted the letter dispatched, so we promised to come back later with envelop money. She was not convinced. She told us she would cut 200 FCFA from the 1000 FCFA we had given her and issue us an EMS receipt of 800 FCFA, to be sure we would return with the balance and complete the EMS fee before our letter would go. We couldn't bear the thought of leaving that office to return to it later and meet the express mail we were sending still waiting for us there. We begged her to no avail. In the end, she open the envelop she had already sealed and addressed, pulled out our documents and handed them back to us. We took the writs and our 1000 FCFA, took a taxi and went to SNEC ourselves for less than 1000 FCFA. As we left her office we wondered how, with such services, EMS would manage to keep paying her!

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