ENG-1988 — Page 318

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COMMUNICATIONS AND THE MEDIA

In the case of airmail postings made at the four main offices - the General Post Office in Central, the Tsim Sha Tsui and Kowloon Central post offices and the International Mail Centre - the aim is to have the letter mail despatched on the same day if outgoing flights are available. Other airmail postings are generally despatched to their overseas destinations within 24 hours.

This year,

747.9 million letters and parcels – a daily average of two million - were handled, an increase of 12 per cent over the 1987 figure. About 6 278 tonnes of letter mail and 4 367 tonnes of parcels were despatched by air, an overall increase of 14 per cent.

The Speedpost service continued to grow rapidly, and is now available to 57 countries, including all of Hong Kong's major trading partners, such as Australia, Canada, China, France, West Germany, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. During the year, 2 295 301 items were handled, an increase of 29 per cent over 1987. Postfax, a joint public facsimile service of the Post Office and Cable and Wireless (Hong Kong) Limited, offers high-speed facsimile transmission of high-quality black and white reproductions of documents, hand-written materials, drawings and personal messages up to A4 size. The Postfax service is now available to 75 countries, including all the major countries trading with Hong Kong. Items can be posted at 32 acceptance offices, and will be ready for delivery overseas within a few hours.

Shau Kei Wan Post Office was reprovisioned in larger premises to provide for improved and increased facilities to cope with rising postal demand in that district. Sheung Wan Post Office, Wo Che Street Post Office and Chang Sha Street Post Office were relocated to make way for redevelopment projects. In addition, three post offices were opened, during the year, bringing the total number of post offices in the territory to 106.

The Post Office issued six sets of special stamps in 1988. The first issue, comprising four stamps and a souvenir sheet, was released in January to mark the Year of the Dragon, the third in the current Lunar New Year series. The second issue, depicting birds of Hong Kong, was released in April. Post cards of enlarged versions of the four stamps were also issued.

Another set of four stamps featuring trees commonly found in Hong Kong was released in June. The fourth issue, comprising four stamps, a souvenir sheet and a prestige stamp booklet was released in August to commemorate the centenary of the Peak Tramway. A single stamp was issued in September to commemorate the centenary of the Catholic Cathedral.

The last issue was a set of charity stamps released in November. These were the first charity stamps in the philatelic history of Hong Kong. Each stamp bore, in addition to the postage, a donation element for raising funds for the Community Chest of Hong Kong.

In connection with the increases in postage rates on September 1, 1988, two definitive stamps of $1.40 and $1.80 denominated values were released. A new pictorial aerogramme bearing a postage of $1.40 was also issued in conjunction with the increases in airmail rates. In order to speed up the processing of letter mail items which are now handled manually, a $109-million contract was awarded on May 2, 1988 for the provision and installation of a mechanised letter sorting system (MLSS). The new system, comprising Optical Character Recognition Machines (OCR), Video Coding Machines (VCM) and Letter Sorting Machines (LSM) will be installed in the mail processing centres of the General Post Office and the International Mail Centre as well as in eight other large district mail delivery offices in the territory.

The OCR system, which can electronically scan the last four lines of an address, will be designed to read addresses typed or machine-printed in Roman type, thus avoiding the