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Lower Austria to have more postal service providers

Lower Austrian People�s Party (�VP) Governor Erwin Pr�ll announced yesterday (Tues) that his province would have at least 500 postal service providers within two years.

Pr�ll said national postal service Post AG and he had agreed on the number, which would include post offices and Post partners in areas without post offices.

At present, there are 261 post offices and 153 Post partners in Lower Austria, or a total of 414 postal service providers.

Post General Director Georg P�lzl said Post had received 65 applications from prospective partners in the province.

Partners may be either businesses or communities, and Pr�ll said there were 23 of the latter at present. Post board chairman Herbert G�tz said: "We are talking with all mayors about partnerships." P�lzl characterised Post�s cooperation with the Lower Austrian government as "exemplary".

Pr�ll noted that a Post partnership was not a lucrative undertaking since partners received around 17,000 Euros annually but added that the number of their customers had increased by 20 per cent owing in part to their more flexible business hours.

Noting that Lower Austria had more Post partners than any other province, P�lzl said: "The model is functioning." He added Post would acquire more partners to meet "the challenges of our time" and help them improve their service to customers.

Many Post partners have replaced closed post offices as Post is trying to cut costs, but the postal workers� union remains opposed to more closures.

Union chief Gerhard Fritz said last month that daily business hours at small post offices could be reduced and staggered in accordance with customers� needs to obviate the need to close them.

He denied that businesses chosen to be new Post partners and offer basic postal services would be able to provide better business hours.

"Post itself could select business hours according to the needs of customers, but it has not talked with us about staggered business hours," Fritz said.

Fritz claimed that Post in reality had no future strategy and had not been able to say how many post offices would eventually be closed.

"We cannot agree with a concept if we do not know what it entails and how it will be executed in practice," he added.

Fritz also claimed that a small post office would have annual revenue of 60,000 Euros whereas a Post partner would have annual revenue of only 15,000 to 16,000 Euros.

Austrian Times

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