Sunday Times 2
It’s written in the sands of time
The General Post Office: The Sri Lanka Postal Department organizes a letter writing competition each year among school children to mark world post day.
World Post day is celebrated each year on October 9 by postal administrations all over the world. The event was declared by the Universal Postal Union in 1969 to mark the creation of the U.P.U in 1874.
On this day in 1874 twenty-two postal representatives from 22 countries gathered in the city of Bern in Switzerland, signed the “Treaty of Bern” and the UNIVERSAL POSTAL UNION (U.P.U.) was created, initially under the name “General Postal Union”. Four years later at the second congress which met in Paris, the name was changed to “Universal Postal Union”. World Post day is observed on 9 October, recalling this date on which the Treaty of Bern was signed. The membership of the UPU has grown to 192 by now.
After the founding of the United Nations, the Universal Postal Union became a specialised agency of the UN in 1948.
It is recorded in history that the first known postal document found in Egypt, dates from 255 BC, but even before that time messages have been exchanged between kings and emperors on nearly every continent using messengers. Eventually private individuals had been allowed to use the messengers to communicate with each other.
This day is significant, as prior to the establishment of the UPU, in the 17th and 18th centuries the exchange of mail between countries was governed by bilateral postal agreements. The system that existed was a complex one. By the 19th century with the rapid development of trade and commerce sectors, simplification was needed in the international postal services.
The 1874 Treaty of Bern succeeded in unifying the confusing international postal services and regulations which existed then, and bringing them into a single postal territory for the exchange of mail between countries. This paved the way, pulling down barriers and frontiers and allowing free flow of international mail. This is how the international mail service we enjoy today was established.
The most noteworthy reform In the process of postal reforms occurred in England in 1840 when Sir Rowland Hill introduced a system of using a postage stamp for prepayment of postage. It established a unified postage fee paid by the sender of a letter of certain weight in the domestic service regardless of the distance it had to travel.
Other countries started using the postage stamp as the means of prepayment of postage in their domestic services. It is the UPU Treaty that provides that mail items with stamps of member countries which are accepted for the entire international route transiting many countries and territories from the country of posting to the country of destination.
The purpose of the World Post day is to bring awareness of the post’s role in everyday lives of people and businesses, and its contribution to global social and economic development. On this day the national winners of the participating countries of the UPU international Letter Writing competition are honoured. The national postal services celebrate this event by organizing national letter writing competitions, awareness programmes, Issuing commemorative stamps, launching new postal products and services and other postal promotional activities.
The UPU Theme for the World Post day each year is different. The theme for 2016 is innovation, integration and inclusion.
The Sri Lanka Postal Department organizes a letter writing competition each year among school children to mark this event. It organizes other activities and programmes to mark this event. The Postal Department selects the best post office country-wide and the best postal employee in different grades to encourage the employees. Among other activities to celebrate World Post day it organizes national as well as regional level events promoting the postal services.
(The writer is a retired Deputy Postmaster-General)