Postal service ‘won’t suffer from changes’
New Zealand Post chief executive David Walsh is reassuring Wellingtonians that postal service levels won’t deteriorate as it moves away from operating standalone PostShops.
Stores in Newtown, Kilbirnie and two central-city sites are facing closure, as NZ Post prepares to partner up with local businesses, who will act as its mail agents.
The decision by the state-owned enterprise to close its Newtown PostShop is due to become the subject of a Newtown Residents’ Association-led protest on Monday.
Speaking after NZ Post’s annual meeting in Wellington yesterday, Walsh was adamant those living in the city’s southern suburbs would not go without after the closure.
‘‘From our perspective, we will – in Newtown – maintain postal services, so I’m quite comfortable for people to voice their concerns or questions about it. If we’re not in a post office in Kilbirnie and Newtown, we’ll be in a partner site.’’
Three or four Newtown businesses were in talks with NZ Post over a potential partnership, he said.
Association president Rhona Carson said there were ‘‘quite a lot of people who are quite distressed’’ about the prospect of losing their specialist Kiwibank-NZ Post outlet.
‘‘It’s a well-used facility. If it closes, particularly the Kiwibank, it means people will have to go over the hill to Kilbirnie. A lot of our residents are elderly people and people in social housing.
‘‘[They’re] people who don’t actually use the internet a great deal and the way they do their business is that they are within walking distance of the current PostShop and Kiwibank,’’ Carson said.
Kiwibank representatives were expected to attend the protest and she hoped they would listen to why the Newtown closure would ‘‘have a big impact on our community’’.
Last week, NZ Post confirmed it was looking for local partners to run postal services currently offered by its Lambton Quay and Featherston St outlets.
Walsh stressed that while those PostShops were slated for closure, customers’ postal needs would still be met.
‘‘What we’re seeing is people are asking different things of us,’’ he told the meeting.
‘‘From postal services, you should see nothing lost. You should still be able to buy stamps, you should still be able to buy courier bags, and send and receive parcels.’’
Kiwibank was expected to open standalone branches in Kilbirnie and on Lambton Quay.
Franchising out NZ Post’s services was a key plank in the company’s strategy to combat declining mail volumes, which have fallen 11 per cent in the past year.
On the flipside, thriving demand for online shopping had seen its international parcel volumes increase by 18 per cent.
While redundancies for some box lobby staff were likely, Walsh was unable to say when jobs would go or how many employees would be affected.
The chief executive wanted to allay fears that local businesses would be unable to match the quality of service seen in post offices.
‘‘Most of our partners are of this model, so across our whole network, we’ve got about 230 franchise partners and we’ve got about 100 corporate stores.
‘‘It’s incumbent for us to make sure we really train our partners well and I’m sure we’ll get feedback if we don’t. But I’d rather we didn’t, we [want to] get it right first time,’’ Walsh said.