We refer to Andy Ho's column headlined 'Lack of post code has SAR lost in the mail' (South China Morning Post, November 6) and to the letters from R. Beaud headlined 'Postal parochialism is unacceptable', and Pete Spurrier 'Helpful codes' (Post, November 12 and 16, respectively).
A post code is a series of letters and numbers (or just numbers) assigned to a postal address to facilitate the sorting and delivery of mail. Hong Kong is one of the few places in the world that does not have a post code system for postal operations.
The Mechanised Letter Sorting System which we introduced in 1990, uses optical character recognition and video coding technology to read addresses and sort letters for delivery postmen.
There is no need under the current mode of postal operations for a postal address to have a post code.
The code system referred to by Mr Spurrier allocates the same code to all the addresses covered by a particular delivery beat.
It enables senders of bulk mail to pre-sort their letters to delivery offices, or even to delivery beats so as to enjoy discounts.
