200 years of history lost

I was reading a newspaper story about the Philpost going high-tech this month when I came upon a portion that said this is part of the 228th anniversary celebration of the Philippine Postal Service. I looked at the figure again. It still said 228.

How can the Philpost celebrate its 228th anniversary when the Philippines itself only celebrated its 113th independence day last June? I read through the entire story and eventually found my answer.

It appears that long before General Aguinaldo declared Philippine independence from Spain on June 12, 1898 the Philippines already had an established postal service under the Spanish.

Then Governor General Basco organized a postal system throughout the islands in 1783.

However, it was not until April 2, 1992 that, by virtue of Republic Act 7354, that the postal system became known as the Philippine Postal Corporation or Philpost. Nevertheless, its history predates the independent republic we now know today as the Philippines.

And that is what makes it very sad, that an institution that has had a very long history, which I would like to think was illustrious through the most part, would fall through the last few decades with disrepute.

Beginning sometime in the 1970s, the Philippine Postal Service began to rack up a notoriety for stolen or tampered mail. This coincided with the first great big wave of Filipino OFWS who started sending the fruits of their labors home.

Sending money through the banks was largely unheard of at the time. The most convenient method was sending money through the mail, and mail pilferers swiftly caught on. The reputation of Philpost as the country’s main and most reliable courier went down the drain.

Working against the efforts of Philpost to crack down on its erring employees was the fact that it was very difficult to catch anyone redhanded but very easy to for any thief to explain away the theft.

All that was needed to escape culpability was for a mail thief to stamp a letter with a notice that said the mail was received in a variety of conditions — opened, torn, etc. That effectively spreads the probability of blame worldwide.

With too many mails pilfered but too few thieves held to account, people began to look elsewhere for reliable means of sending or receiving mail. In stepped private courier services that capitalized on the shortcomings of Philpost.

For a little more extra cost, people were assured of speed, safety and efficiency in the handling of their mail. In the end, people realized it was more cost-effective this way — a few pesos more in return for the assurance that you get everything in your mail fast.

Because of that fiasco involving loss of confidence, Philpost virtually handed its business on a silver platter to private competitors. Right now, there is a wide range of private courier services jostling for space in a booming industry.

The story of Philpost is a sad one, no matter how much fanfare it may try to inject into its 228th anniversary, for I do not think it can ever successfully recover the trust and confidence it enjoyed almost single-handedly for two centuries.

On hindsight, the entry of private couriers and the advent of computers and electronic means by which to send mail would have been inevitable. But that would not have been enough to topple Philpost had it been able to arrest the erosion of trust quickly and decisively.

In America, the US Mail is still giving private couriers and electronic means a run for their money. That is because while methods of sending anything may have changed, the US mail never lost its trustworthiness, reliability and efficiency. In the end, that is all that matters.