Lagos — West African sub-regional poster service operators yesterday converged in Lagos to brainstorm on how to improve on quality of goods and services in the continents.

The meeting which was with the theme: Quality of service regional approach to field support includes: Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Gambia and Sierra Leone.

According to Postmaster general and chief executive officer, Nigerian Postal Service, Malam Ibrahim Mori Baba, the meeting was first of its kind in Africa and it intends to achieve the enhancement of quality of service skills, introduce up to date measurement and technologically support systems and promote reliability and sustainability of the world wide postal net work for all products and services such as letter post, parcel post and expedited Mail Service (EMS)

"It is believed that with determination and commitment, the programme would be successful in the West African English speaking sub region, taking cognizance of what it is intended to achieve", he said

He said as the world postal body including its auxiliaries at whatever level of operations are facing innumerable challenges that directly or indirectly create ripple effects on quality of service, technological demands and customers yearnings and aspirations for an effective postal service would persist

The secretary general, the Pan African Postal Union, Mrs Rodah Masaviru said the improvement of the quality of service is a major preoccupation of the global postal fraternity and one of the priority areas identified by stakeholders with the regional development plan for Africa between 2009 and 2012.

Within these priority areas, Masaviru said focus would mainly be on improvement of cross boarder mail transmission by road and integrated quality of service management for all products and services and covering track and trace and addressing

She said the regional approach to quality of service improvement is a step in the right direction, as it takes account of sub-regional peculiarities and needs and brings together all the stakeholders, adding that key among them would be the UPU and PAPU and member countries to ensure optimal utilization of resources.

"Africa faces quite a number of challenges; among them are poor infrastructure, lack of adequate skills to quickly adapt to new technologies, comparatively low network coverage and lack of appropriate addressing systems, all of which negatively impact on the quality of service", she said.