27 July 2004

The South African Post Office (SAPO) and the United States Postal Services (USPS) have joined hands to fight against international postal crime.

Representatives of the Inspectorate of the USPS are conducting a course for southern African postal agencies to enable participating countries to access a global database of mail irregularities that occur in different countries.

The three-day course, known as eMaria (Mathematical Analysis of Route Irregularities in the Air Transport of Mail), is being attended by security and investigations personnel from postal administrations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region at the SAPO Learning Institute in Midrand, Johannesburg.

The course is a result of a successful trip to the US by the security and investigations team of the SAPO earlier this year where the two administrations agreed to share experiences on fighting postal crime.

eMaria will enable participating postal administrations to study the patterns and trends of irregularities and thus devise interventions against such acts.

"At the heart of this co-operation with other postal authorities lies our intention to make the public aware of the various role-players involved in the movement of international mail from one country to another, which include role-players other than postal administrations," said Siviwe Mapisa, a general manager at SAPO.

He said this awareness campaign would help the customer to understand the role that postal administrations played in managing the movement of mail.

Currently, about 35 countries from the developing and developed world participate in the eMaria programme.

South Africa, as the leading postal administration in Africa and a member of the Mail Security Working Group of the Postal Security Action Group (PSAG), has taken the initiative to ensure that the countries in the continent also participate in the programme.

SADC countries attending the course include Zimbabwe, Botswana, Kenya, Swaziland and Zambia. The SAPO has sent 15 senior investigations personnel to the course.

Source: BuaNews

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