PUC bills can now be paid at all post offices |21 February 2020
The joint press conference (Photo: Jude Morel)
The Seychelles Postal Services has added yet another service for its clients with the introduction of payments of Public Utilities Corporation (PUC) bills.
In a joint press conference yesterday, deputy chief executive of the Seychelles Postal Services Alex Etienne and PUC’s chief commercial officer Michel Zialor announced that the public can now start paying their electricity and water bills at all of the post offices across the country.
Payments for PUC bills can be effected at the central post office in Victoria as well as post offices located in Anse Royale, Baie Ste Anne Praslin, Grand Anse Praslin and on La Digue.
The new addition to the Seychelles Postal Services is the result of lengthy discussions and negotiations between the Seychelles Postal Services and PUC which culminated into the signing of an agreement on January 31.
Mr Zialor noted that PUC opted to diversify and decentralise its bill payment service to post offices in order to provide their customers with more options and reduce the large number of customers who come into their offices for payments.
“As you know, sometimes at PUC we get long queues of people who want to pay their bills, especially during the end of the month so we wanted to facilitate the payments of bills; make it much faster and easier for our customers,” Mr Zialor explained.
He noted that the corporation’s IT team has already worked on and installed the system which will allow staff at the postal services to effect the transactions which can be done either through cash, debit/credit cards or cheques.
The customers only have to produce their bills or customer number, pay and leave.
Although the Seychelles Postal Services are being paid by the PUC to offer this service, Mr Zialor stressed that this fee will not be passed on to PUC’s customers.
On his part, Mr Etienne said that the postal services are doing its utmost to ensure that this new service and other services rendered by the post office go smoothly.
He noted that they are in the process of shifting the small parcel pick-up counter from its present location inside the central post office, to allow for more room since the queues for parcels pick-ups can also be quite long at times.
“We do get a lot of customers who come to pick up their parcels so we are trying to provide an added-value service and our ultimate aim is to transform the post office into a one-stop shop; you come to collect your parcel and at the same time you can pay your telephone bills, which we currently provide, and now you can pay your utilities bills,” Mr Etienne stated.
“We are presently in negotiations with other service providers to increase the number of services we offer in post offices,” he added.
Other services presently being offered by the Seychelles Postal Services include payments for Cable & Wireless bills, sale of starter packs, E-Top Up, sale of parking coupons and reply coupons, rental of private letter boxes, key cutting services, sale of stamps and other postal-related services.
Elsie Pointe
