New post office service to ease Chatuchak traffic woes

BANGKOK: -- Shoppers at Bangkok’s famous Weekend Market could soon find themselves coming home empty-handed each time, thanks to a proposed new Post Office service which will allow goods to be delivered directly to shoppers’ homes.

While foreign tourists are already served by companies based at Chatuchak Market which offer shipping services to destinations abroad, domestic shoppers have so far had to cart all their purchases home themselves.

But according to a Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) spokesman, ICT Minister Suraphong Suebwonglee has asked the Thai Post Office Co. Ltd. to study the possibility of setting up a delivery service for domestic purchasers, in the hope of encouraging shoppers to travel to the market by public transport rather than private car.

The huge number of private vehicles which flock to Chatuchak Market each weekend make the area notoriously congested.

The recently privatized Post Office company, once a loss-making state enterprise, has now trans formed itself into a profitable business. It already provides a valuable delivery service for small-scale producers working under the government’s One Tambon One Product (OTOP) scheme.

--TNA 2004-12-05

I'm not sure about loss making but the Post Office at Chatuchak has certainly lost plenty of the letters that we have posted from there. I definitely wouldn't trust them with anything that I had bought at the market!