Postmen to rest Saturdays by Ivy

Title: Postmen to rest Saturdays

Source: the Straits Times

Name of the writer: Tan Weizhen

Student’s name: Ivy

Summary:

With the popularization of the new communication tools such as e-mail, SMSes, the amount of snail mail has declined to a large extent. Statistics show that there are more than 181 million items delivered in the year 2002-2003 while only 139 million in 2008-2009. What is more, the volume of mail on Saturday is 40 per cent less than on a usual weekday. Therefore, the Singpost has decided that the postmen can have a rest on Saturdays from May 15. To make up for the break time, Singpost will prolong the collecting timings of item on Friday. Also, the chief executive of SingPost Ng Hin Lee promised that there would be no drop of items delivered due to the break of the postmen. At the mean time, more than 70 countries has adopted a 5-day week for their mail delivery service.

My perspective:

From my point of view, the rest given to the postmen is quite reasonable. In the first place, the break on Saturdays will not influence the amount of items delivered as the chief promised. Secondly, the volume of mail on Saturday is only 60 per cent of the weekday. Since less people tend to deliver mail on Saturday, why not give the postmen a short break? Last but not least, Singapore has adopted a five-day week for most of the jobs for a long time, as is known to everyone. Then the mail delivery service should not be an exception; the work of a postman is very tiring, they need a break to deal with their own matters and dust them off. Some people may hold the view that what if I have an urgent mail to deliver on Saturday? I think the snail mail itself is rather slow, if the mail is really urgent, a express delivery can be taken.