Companies to check every package mailed

Safety measures in Beijing will include senders' real identities

BEIJING - The Beijing postal authority has ordered express delivery workers to stamp their names or job numbers on waybills and denied saying that clients are required to provide real names when sending or receiving packages.

Every staff member in the delivery industry must open packages to check what clients send or receive and seal their names or job numbers on express bills starting March 1, Wang Wentai, director of market supervision department from Beijing municipal postal administration, told China Daily on Wednesday.

For clients who decline to open the package for inspection, express delivery staff can refuse to send their packages, according to the State Post Bureau.

"The authority used to ask staff to do the open inspection and write the requirement into a regulation, but it has not been well enforced," Wang said, adding such ignorance had brought danger to both workers and society.

In August, a package exploded in an express delivery station in Hangzhou, capital of the East China's Zhejiang province. Two workers were injured. Earlier in February this year, a similar tragedy happened in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, injuring a resident's eyes.

"The cases shocked the industry and also warned us to attach more importance to security," he said. "To avoid further accidents, we ask the delivery people in the city to clear their responsibility through signing names or job numbers."

Meanwhile, Wang denied the real-name system that has been widely reported online.

"What we have required is to do the open inspection, which is different from delivery with real identification," he said, adding the real-name policy is an experiment by some individual companies in some specific regions instead of a nationwide mandatory requirement.

Zhou Ye, manager of the information office of Yuantong Express, which delivers more than 2.6 million packages every day, said the company has always required their workers to open and check packages for safety concerns and made sure clients' information on each waybill is clear.

Since last year, Yuantong, one of 25 express enterprises, joined a pilot program to carry out the real-name system in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province.

"Our workers in Shaoxing record clients' ID cards and mobile phone numbers in the computer during the delivery, and verify the information with special software provided by local public security organs," according to Zhou.

"In other cities, for those who become clients for the first time or do not have a fixed address, we'll also require them to show their ID cards," he said, adding they plan to distribute a 3,000 yuan ($470) handheld scanner to each of the almost 30,000 workers in the country for package security.

"Real-name delivery is a trend and better for the development of the industry," he added.

Yet some couriers do not agree that the express delivery industry should develop in such a strict way, while a few residents also worried about privacy.

"I have about 300 parcels to send every day. I can't imagine the size of workload if I have to open every package to check," said Hao Zuohu, a courier at Shentong Express. "I just check the valuable articles that I deliver and have never asked my clients to show identification cards."

Cao Hui, a 24-year-old employee at a water supply administration in Beijing, said she would refuse to send packages with her real identity. "What I care about most is the speed of the delivery and whether my parcel is sent to the correct address or not," she added.

Meanwhile, Chen Linhua, secretary-general with Shanghai Express Trade Association, said the real-name express delivery will face many difficulties.

"If every worker can enforce the requirement to open every package to check it, security in the industry will be ensured," Chen said.

"But deliveries with real identities will lower working efficiency and increase costs, while distinguishing real identification cards from fake ones will be another challenge," he added.