An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 cus­tomers fell prey to text mes­sages with false in­for­ma­tion claim­ing to have been sent by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost) de­mand­ing that the re­cip­i­ents pay a sum of mon­ey to col­lect their mail.  

The cus­tomers pro­vid­ed de­tails of their ad­dress­es and cred­it cards af­ter ac­cess­ing the link and paid the sums re­quest­ed for their pack­ages, and as a re­sult, they lost vary­ing sums from their cred­it cards.

TTPost chair­man Michael Seales said in an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness that he could not ver­i­fy, at the time, the quan­tum of mon­ey stolen from the cus­tomers.

 The SMS mes­sage that was sent to cus­tomers read as fol­lows: “The TTPost pack­age ar­rived at the ware­house but could not be de­liv­ered due to in­com­plete ad­dress in­for­ma­tion. Please con­firm your ad­dress in the link.”

This is the sec­ond time for the year the Cor­po­ra­tion has fall­en vic­tim to the SMS scam, as it hap­pened in Feb­ru­ary, when it had to send out an ad­vi­so­ry to its cus­tomers warn­ing them to be on the alert for the false in­for­ma­tion be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed.  

No one has since been held for the scam.

Asked if the po­lice were able to hold any of the sus­pects, Seales said, “Our se­cu­ri­ty team con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the mat­ter close­ly and has re­port­ed the mat­ter to the TTPS Cy­ber­crime Unit. As far as the Cor­po­ra­tion is aware, in­ves­ti­ga­tions are still on­go­ing.”

On what mea­sures have been put in place to avoid this from rec­cur­ring, the chair­man said TTPost con­tin­ues to put out warn­ings/mes­sages on so­cial me­dia, its web­site, and print me­dia, ad­vis­ing the pub­lic to be wary of unau­tho­rised re­quests for per­son­al de­tails and cred­it card pay­ments.  

“The Cor­po­ra­tion al­so pro­vid­ed a hot­line (800-POST) and an email ad­dress, ‘cus­tomer.ser­vice@ttpost.gov.tt’, for cus­tomers to ac­cess when they are un­cer­tain of the au­then­tic­i­ty of the mes­sages they re­ceive via email or SMS. We are proac­tive­ly coun­ter­ing these scams by ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic at all vir­tu­al or phys­i­cal touch­points. How­ev­er, there is dif­fi­cul­ty in avoid­ing scams of this na­ture be­cause there is no fool-proof method by which the Cor­po­ra­tion could pre­vent these types of scams, giv­en the na­ture of the dig­i­tal land­scape,” he stressed.

With cy­ber­crime on the rise in T&T and the Caribbean, Seales said, TTPost staff is re­ceiv­ing on­go­ing train­ing to recog­nise and re­spond to these types of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.  

Part of the train­ing, he said, re­quires staff to ad­vise and ed­u­cate their cor­po­rate and in­di­vid­ual cus­tomers on how to avoid such scams and to keep them abreast of any cur­rent or po­ten­tial at­tacks via warn­ings and ad­vi­sories in the print me­dia and our on­line plat­forms.  

“Fur­ther, our IT De­part­ment proac­tive­ly ed­u­cates staff, and in part­ner­ship with our com­mu­ni­ca­tions arm, we en­sure our mes­sages on these scams are in the pub­lic do­main. We al­so work close­ly with and have the sup­port of our line min­istry- the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, to utilise re­sources at the Min­istry lev­el to ed­u­cate, in­form and pro­tect the pub­lic as best as we can,” the chair­man out­lined.

Rev­enue sta­ble

Seales, who has been chair­man for just un­der a year, shared that TTPost sub­ven­tion was cut by $7 mil­lion dol­lars in the 2024 bud­get and since the be­gin­ning of fis­cal 2024, the Cor­po­ra­tion had to fill that gap.

He not­ed that TTPost be­gan han­dling the visa couri­er ser­vices in Jan­u­ary.

“This project has been a re­sound­ing suc­cess for the Cor­po­ra­tion and our cus­tomers, visa ap­pli­cants.  

“We are now at a point where we are ex­ceed­ing the ser­vice ex­pec­ta­tions of the US State De­part­ment in terms of on-time de­liv­ery and turn­around time to cus­tomers and all-around cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion,” said the TTPost chair­man.  

This has prompt­ed the Cor­po­ra­tion to take a sec­ond look at its busi­ness mod­el.  

“The Cor­po­ra­tion, as a re­sult, is now in its fi­nal stages of in­tro­duc­ing a couri­er di­vi­sion which will be head­ed by the gen­er­al man­ag­er of couri­er ser­vices, a couri­er man­ag­er, and new staff. We have redi­rect­ed re­sources ded­i­cat­ed strict­ly to the growth of new prod­ucts and ser­vices in its new­ly rolled out couri­er di­vi­sion,” he dis­closed.

Al­so, Seales said the phi­lat­elics and stamp col­lect­ing have al­so helped with rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

He not­ed that be­cause of this, TTPost was able to close the sub­ven­tion gap to be­tween $4 and $5 mil­lion.

“If these new arrange­ments that we have made as re­gards the couri­er di­vi­sion, the phi­lat­elics and stamps, what will hap­pen as 2024 pro­gress­es in­to 2025, is that we will cross over that $7 mil­lion deficit. That means TTPost will not on­ly be sta­ble but grow­ing its rev­enue mar­gins,” the chair­man re­vealed.

Un­der­go­ing in­no­v­a­tive plans  

The chair­man in­di­cat­ed that TTPost is look­ing at op­por­tu­ni­ties to part­ner with mi­cro, small, and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs).

He said the aim is to look at dif­fer­ent e-com­merce mod­els and the Cor­po­ra­tion is al­so in­creas­ing the num­ber of Gov­ern­ment and so­cial ser­vices it pro­vides.

“The in­no­v­a­tive game-chang­er in TTPost is its Phi­lat­el­ic Bu­reau’s new ini­tia­tives and the cre­ation of a new couri­er di­vi­sion which is pro­ject­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove TTPost’s earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty. All this is an­chored in the de­vel­op­ment of a new reg­is­tered mail sys­tem geared to­wards boost­ing the ser­vices and prod­ucts of­fered by MSMEs that en­sure the high­est lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty, track­ing of pack­ages metic­u­lous­ly through­out their jour­ney, and re­quir­ing sig­na­tures up­on de­liv­ery to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“This pol­i­cy ad­dress­es the evo­lu­tion of the Cor­po­ra­tion’s ser­vice stan­dards. These and more are some of the nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties for the Cor­po­ra­tion to lever­age its tra­di­tion­al strengths, its peo­ple and prop­er­ties, to ben­e­fit pub­lic and pri­vate en­ter­pris­es and the or­di­nary man in the street,” he said.

As it re­lates to TTPost sur­vival with oth­er couri­er com­pa­nies that have opened up in T&T, Seales quick­ly said the Cor­po­ra­tion re­mains the sin­gle-largest lo­cal couri­er op­er­a­tor in the coun­try with over 85 per cent of that mar­ket share be­long­ing to TTPost.  

“We con­tin­ue to grow and stay very com­pet­i­tive in terms of on­line car­go con­sol­ida­tors- sky­box ser­vice providers or e-com­merce providers. Re­gard­ing our in­ter­na­tion­al couri­er, our strate­gic part­ner­ship is with DHL, one of the largest couri­er op­er­a­tors world­wide with a rep­u­ta­tion for ser­vice ex­cel­lence. So, to an­swer your ques­tion, we are in a healthy po­si­tion in the couri­er in­dus­try,” Seales added.

In­creased salaries for postal work­ers.

In March, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 work­ers protest­ed out­side the of­fice of Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al in Port-of-Spain, de­mand­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a 2011 job eval­u­a­tion re­port, which in­cludes rec­om­men­da­tions for an 18.6 per cent in­crease in salaries.

When asked whether any head­way was be­ing made re­gard­ing this, Seales said, “Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Mar­vin Gon­za­les our line min­is­ter, in April said that the mat­ter is be­ing con­sid­ered at all lev­els and that he has al­ready ad­dressed the is­sue with all stake­hold­ers and re­quest­ed pa­tience in the mat­ter. Gon­za­les re­port­ed that ne­go­ti­a­tions are set to be­gin lat­er this year.”

The min­is­ter al­so called on the is­sues to be set­tled, es­pe­cial­ly as the work­ers claimed they are over­worked and un­der­paid.

Seales agreed with the min­is­ter and stat­ed that Gon­za­les has ad­vo­cat­ed for the man­age­ment to meet with the T&T Postal Work­ers Union (TTP­WU) to al­le­vi­ate some of the con­cerns in the in­ter­im with the help of the board un­til the ne­go­ti­a­tions are re­solved lat­er this year.  

“The Min­is­ter has stressed that the work­ers are the ones who serve the cit­i­zens of this great coun­try. If the work­ers are not hap­py, then pro­duc­tiv­i­ty will be low. Cit­i­zens of this coun­try will not get the ser­vice they have grown ac­cus­tomed to from postal work­ers, as postal work­ers’ morale may be af­fect­ed if care and con­sid­er­a­tion are not giv­en to their plight. Man­age­ment on the ad­vice of the Board is ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing the union in non-pe­cu­niary mat­ters in the in­ter­est and for the ben­e­fit of the work­ers,” Seales de­tailed.