 Distinguished guests, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Kayla Redstone and I work with the communications program here at the UPU. I will be your moderator for today's ceremonies. I am sincerely honored to welcome guests from the global postal sector here with us today online for this very special event. We have a very full program to offer you today. First, we will start with the annual World Post Day messages read by the Director General and Deputy Director General. Our new Council of Administration and Postal Operations Council Chairs also have messages to share with all of you. Next, we will move on to our Innovate to Recover interactive session. During this session, ministers responsible for the post and postal CEOs will tell us about some of the remarkable postal innovations that they have put in place during the pandemic. After this session, we will move on to our three award ceremonies for today for Poste Italiana, 2IPD, and also the Best of the Best Letters competition. So without further ado, I would like to invite the UPU Director General, Mr. Bishare Hussain to the lectern to read his 2021 World Post Day message. Thank you, our moderator, Kayla, thank you. Dear Excellencies, dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you are on this planet, we all owe a debt of gratitude to a small band of individuals whose creativity and innovation is helping the world to escape the clutches of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the start of this crisis, there were concerns that a vaccine to combat the virus will take many years to develop. Instead, the unprecedented collaboration of individuals, companies and organizations produced vaccine within a year. Along with nurses and doctors who risk their lives daily, the scientists and researchers who developed the COVID-19 vaccine are global heroes. Their triumph in achieving this medical breakthrough has led to fresh hope of preventing infections and thus containing the spread of the virus. It will lead, hopefully, to a better future. The story of how this innovation promoted life-changing solutions is one that global business in general and international postal sector in particular can emulate. COVID-19 not only halted much of the international postal sector for a significant period, it also undermined business strategies and plans. Again as this background, the sector was forced to become creative and develop new ideas and methods to serve customers. New social and economic postal services have sprung up. Creative ways of delivering mail have emerged and e-commerce has prospered in many parts of the world. And in many countries and territories, posts are also involved in last mile delivery of the vaccine using complex cold storage methods, offering platforms for booking vaccinations and even providing space for vaccination centres. These activities are not taken. These activities are undeniable proof of just how inseparable the post is from the society and customers it serves. This agile approach to service and business also offers hopes for the future of the postal sector. All too often we have allowed pessimism to cloud our vision for the postal future. And yet time and again, the posts have proven their capacity to rise to any occasion and continue to offer services with remarkable levels of resilience. When COVID-19 affected all the countries of the world, including the established supply chain infrastructure, the post will still find a way to continue offering services to the communities. It is this innovativeness of the posts and their resilience in serving communities that we are celebrating on the occasion of World Post Day. The theme of this year's World Post Day is innovate to recover. Together, let us learn the lessons arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and to understand that innovation is not an accessory. It is the driving force behind recovery. And what makes this sector crucial to billions of people? I wish you a successful World Post Day. Thank you very much. I would like to take this opportunity to first and foremost thank the World Postal Community for their service to humanity. Ladies and gentlemen, I have participated in many, many, many years in this event. Both in my country when I was a junior officer, when I was the CEO of my country, and for the last nine years I have been participating in this very important event. The post has always been there for society, from the dawn of civilization to the present day. Challenges have come, but we have always risen to the equation. Technologies have come to threaten our business, but we have used the same technologies to provide more efficient and reliable range of services to the society. And today, when COVID has threatened and challenged the whole world, once again the universal postal community has stood up to provide services to the citizens when all hope was lost. This once again confirms the role and relevance of the universal postal union and the post in general to society. I want to thank the millions of men and women, postmen and postwomen, managers, senior executives and all the global community in the postal industry who have been resilient and who have stood up to this challenge and provided services to our citizens. I would like to take this opportunity also once again is a significant day for me. This may be the last official function I am going to perform as the head of the universal postal union on a world post day. And on this occasion I would like to express my thanks to all my colleagues in the postal world, all the member states with whom we have worked so closely during the last nine years to provide remarkable achievements and success for this union, to the restricted unions who have worked with us, to the governments, regulators, the private sector, the academia and all the international organizations with which we have what we call very close collaborations. I also want to thank my colleague Mr. Pascal Cleaver, my deputy director general who has been with us all this time and provided me with a lot of support and I also want to thank my international secretariat, my staff of the International Bureau here who are the heroes of this union. You may not see many of them on their faces but you may not know them but I can assure you that every single individual here in this building has provided invaluable service that we cannot be able to put price on it. I want to thank you, I want to thank everybody for this very important event and I wish you success and good health to you and your loved ones. Thank you very much. Thank you director general. I would now like to invite the deputy director general Pascal Cleaver to the lectern to read a message from UN secretary general Antonio Guterres. Thank you. Ambassador Rissan, director general of the UN Universal Postal Union, Mr. Mr. President of the Council of Administration dear friends, president of the Postal Operations Council. We are here today to celebrate the World Postal Day and it's my privilege of course to read through the message of Antonio Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations. Since our organization has French as an official language, I will be speaking French, it's also a language that Mr. Guterres speaks. Here is his message. On World Post Day we recognize the invaluable contributions of postal workers to our societies and economies. The vast postal network involving millions of workers moving billions of pieces of mail and parcels through hundreds of thousands of post offices is woven into our societies and connects communities the world over. As we continue to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience and commitment of these essential workers are an inspiration. We owe them our gratitude. The theme for this year's World Post Day, innovate to recover, highlights how the postal sector is adapting to new realities and how it is redefining itself, taking on new roles founded on digitalization, e-commerce and financial services. Innovate to recover invites everyone in the international postal sector to embrace creative change and leverage technology as together we look to build forward better from the pandemic. I congratulate the Universal Postal Union and the international postal sector for your tireless efforts delivering mail, providing essential services, enabling trade and promoting literacy. The United Nations looks forward to advancing our partnership in the service of sustainable development and a better world for all. This was the message from the Secretary General of the United Nations on this 9th of October, Mr Antonio Guterres. Thank you. Thank you Deputy Director General. Although he could not be here with us live today, our new Council of Administration Chair has sent us a special video message from Cote d'Ivoire. So could I please ask my colleagues to play the video message from Mr Isaac Namiau. Excellent honourable guests, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, we will meet again this year to celebrate together the World Post Day. This commemoration reveals a particular meaning for the post-world actors in the next few days of the 27th Congress of the Universal Postal Union which has just happened in Abidjan. This first hybrid congress in the history of the Universal Postal Union, through the COVID-19 pandemic, is the proof that the post-world actors are able to adapt and reinvent themselves, especially at least in the technology of information and communication that has been announced as those who should kill the job of the post. Ladies and gentlemen, I take this privilege to congratulate you, bravo for what the post-world actors have shown to the whole world. I congratulate you for your great mobilisation and your commitment to your people, from the start of the health crisis. As a post-world actor, you have demonstrated your determination to serve the citizens by making them proof of creativity and innovating in the implementation of many social services. The health crisis has not been a reason for the post-world actors, on the other hand, we have demonstrated our adaptability and our willingness to continue to participate in the socio-economic development of our countries. This is why, with the stress of the health crisis, we are committed to elevating the number of girls who could, in the future, be part of our sector and, above all, to highlight the innovation that would allow us to re-launch the dynamic. I thank you for your kind attention, I wish you all and everyone a good celebration of the post-world day. Our incoming Postal Operations Council Chair has also sent us his well wishes from France. I would ask our colleagues to please play the video message for Mr Jean-Paul Forcivil. Bonjour à toutes et à tous, cher postier du monde entier. C'est avec un grand plaisir qu'à l'occasion de cette journée mondiale de la Poste, je vous accueille, ici, dans ce lieu, le spot du groupe La Poste, nouvelle vitrine de l'idovation, véritable agoradéchange d'idées et de rangs. En tant que président du Conseil d'exploitation postale nouvellement élu, j'ai à coeur de partager avec lui ma vision pour les quatre années à venir face aux défis qui attendent notre vie. En jeu climatique, challenge lié aux échanges du e-commerce et numérisation des services postaux. Comme vous le savez, les crises sont des accélérateurs de transformation. Ainsi, dans la nouvelle structure du CEP, toutes les commissions sont impactées par ces enjeux et ses nécessités d'innovation. Qu'il s'agisse de la chaîne logistique avec la Commission 1, le développement des services physiques et du e-commerce pour la Commission 2, ou du développement des marchés d'innovation pour la Commission 3, mais aussi des organes qui rapportent directement au CEP, comme la coopérative EMS et la coopérative télématique et son centre des technologies postales. Le besoin de postes et de proximité mis en lumière par la crise sanitaire nous oblige à faire preuve d'agilité et de flexibilité. Pour répondre aux nouvelles contraintes, tout en maintenant un service pérenne et accessible au purant. Chers collègues, il nous faut continuer à travailler sur le développement du numérique, fiabiliser la collecte, le traitement et la diffusion des deux. C'est ce qu'attendent de nous, l'organisation des douanes par exemple, mais aussi les transporteurs, surtout les entreprises et nos clients. Toutes ces actions doivent s'inscrire dans un environnement plus responsable, plus inclusif et plus vert. Je vous remercie une fois de plus de votre confiance et vous renouvelle mon engagement au sein du nouveau Quatulor, auquel j'ai l'honneur de participer aux côtés de M. Métoki, Osval et Nyanbaya. Vive la poste et bonne fête à tous et à tous. Thank you to both our Council of Administration and Postal Operations Council chairs for those kind messages today. As the Director-General explained, our theme for today is Innovate to Recover. It celebrates the creativity and resilience of the post, which has provided essential services throughout the entire pandemic. What a perfect opportunity now, here on World Post Day, to celebrate them and to hear their stories. We called on our ministers responsible for the post and Postal CEOs to share their experiences of the pandemic with us. They are joining us from far and wide through videos and live interactions on Zoom with us today. First, we will hear from the ministerial level of Argentina and Denmark. Then we will hear from CEOs of Posts from Bangladesh, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Mexico and Vietnam. To start our session, we have a special video message from Argentina's Secretary of Public Innovation, her Excellency, Mikayla Sanchez-Malcom. On the World Post Day, from Argentina, we wanted to greet all the workers who were part of our Bandera Post and also all the private networks that operate and work in the Argentine Republic. We also wanted to tell you some of the measures and some of the advances we were taking forward in the framework of the pandemic. On the one hand, these advances are in a dialogue table, from the Bandera Post, but also with all the private providers, and products in this dialogue table could be advanced in different protocols that had as an objective to take care of the work of the workers of the networks, ensuring a reception and delivery protocol, obviously of paper packages. We also worked on a traceability protocol of the packages that, although it was quite implemented, the protocol we launched has as an objective to universalize that obligation to provide information to citizens, to clients, regarding where their packages go. But, fundamentally, the Argentine Bandera Post made an enormous effort in terms of capacity, investment, infrastructure, linked to the distribution of vaccines. For the first time, a national vaccination campaign throughout the Argentine territory, which is a very extensive territory. Argentina is the eighth largest country in terms of the surface of the world. And in this country, we have distributed, in what goes from the vaccination campaign, more than 57 million vaccines throughout the national territory, with a collaboration, with a commitment and a strategic reform of the Bandera Post, of which we are very proud and very proud. Simply tell them this, tell them that we are part of the international dialogue table, that we are working on the regulatory update, and that we want to emphasize and reinforce the strategic importance of the Bandera Post and of the private borrowers, in the framework of the pandemic, in terms of composing and accompanying all the social and economic training of Argentina. So, a huge greeting to all our workers and our thanks for all the work they have done so far. Thank you very much for that message, Ms. Malcolm. We are very happy to see that the Post was able to become such a central actor in the delivery of important vaccines across Argentina. This work has truly highlighted the essential role of the Post. We are also honored to have a video message from Denmark's Minister of Transport, His Excellency, Benny Engelbrecht. COVID-19 has really been a challenging task for everyone within the Postal Sector, also in Denmark. First of all, of course, we needed to protect our workers. We needed to protect all the customers that needed to pick up parcels and send them real. And it's also been very important to make sure that people could get home deliveries. The number of parcels has increased tremendously. And finally, all the deliveries of COVID-19 test kits, medicines, protective equipment, all of that. It's all been a challenging task. And on top of that, we needed to make sure that the international Post lines were operational, even though that the costs were increasing. To sum up, it's been an enormous task and has changed the Postal Sector quite tremendously, especially with the number of parcels going in and out. And I think that will be a staying influence in the future. But a warm regard to everyone that made sure that Denmark came through the COVID-19 as good as we did, the Postal Sector has been an important part of that task as well. Thank you very much to Mr. Engelbrecht for sharing how the pandemic has changed the parcels market in Denmark with the Post taking a very central role in delivering essential public health items as well. Mr. Suraz Uden, Director General of the Bangladesh Post is here with us live on Zoom and would like to share his story with us. So I would please ask Mr. Uden to unmute yourself and kindly tell us about the innovations that you have introduced in Bangladesh. Thank you very much. Dear colleagues of Postal Sectors of the World, good morning, good afternoon to you all. The human race has not foreseen for long such a detrimental catastrophe like COVID-19. It would be worth to mention here that the existence of human civilization is really at stake now. The current COVID-19 pandemic illustrates why the universal postal service must be regarded as essential. When communication options available to the public are limited and a free movement is restricted, the postal network reliably serves many households and provides access to a range of services from the delivery of household items to payment solution. Bangladesh Post has already taken a number of steps to mitigate the sufferings caused by this COVID-19. Vehicle and premises of Bangladesh Post are being disinfected on a regular interval to ensure protection for our customers, visitors and employees. Even during coronavirus crisis when the whole country was under lockdown, Bangladesh Post provided savings bank service, mobile financial service, digital commerce, that is e-commerce, allowances payable under social safety net, daily necessities and emergency medical items uninterruptedly in a limited range. 1.7 million native families receives financial assistance as a gift of holy Eid al-Fitr from her Excellency Prime Minister through mobile financial service of Bangladesh Post, Nagat. Bangladesh Post has already utilized its own transportation system to the fullest to send PPE, necessary medicine, surgical masks, coronavirus testing kits, awareness leaflet across the country, three of charts. This task eases the conveyance of necessary medical items from the central medicine depot to district civil search done of fish. Using a mobile post of fish, Bangladesh Post rendered its service to people's doorsteps. Bangladesh Post launched a service called Krishabandu Darksheba, that is a farmer's friendly postal service on 9 May 2020 to deliver perishable agricultural products of marginal farmers. Utilizing its own transportation system, the vegetables produced by farmers as well as seasonal fruits were delivered to the wholesale markets in Dhaka, free of charge. A roll of Bangladesh Post during COVID-19 crisis has been published in the new EMS Homepage of Universal Post on UPU as a story highlighting course vital role during the crisis. Bangladesh Post would like express respect and gratitude to UPU, the APPU and all other member countries of the UPU and the APPU for extending hands of kind cooperation towards the people of Bangladesh as well as postal frontliners in Bangladesh Post. We sincerely hope working together with the relevant stakeholders in the key of stopping the spread of the virus, saving lives and building resilient postal services operations that provide reliable services during the current crisis and beyond. We would like to thank all postal operators, postal unions and postal workers globally for their dedication and engagement to keeping the postal network running during these difficult times. Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you very much for being here with us live, Mr. Uden. It's very interesting to know the role your post has also played in providing financial services throughout the pandemic. Here with us live, we also have Mr. Sherry Farouk, the chairman of Egypt Post. He's on Zoom, so I would please invite you, Mr. Farouk, to unmute your microphone and take the floor. Thank you very much. Dear Khuli, in this day I would like to salute the postmen and the postwoman in Egypt and the world for their courage and devotion to serve as their society and put their life into dangers to keep the basic needs of their society fulfillment during the hard time pandemic. When ordinary people were advised to stay at home and not to mix with others, most staff were going out of their home every day and served the mix with all type of people and exchanged their parcels and banknotes touched by unknown number of heads when there were doubts about everything and everyone. There were certain of things, their duty to serve. In Egypt, postal staff stood brave and endured and hard to initiative working hours to serve million of citizens till the last minute of before curfew states that therefore postal staff were permitted to move during the curfew hours like the medical staff. Egypt Post is the most extended connected network in the country of more than 4,200 post office, 1,000 ATMs and 50 mobile post office cars and 50 postal kiosks. This capacity made Egypt Post stand strong in the face of the pandemic while many services provided were not able to keep their services offering stable as the pandemic forces them to decrease their staff which affected their capacity and to provide their service to a neighbour in a stable way or even forced the complete closure. Upon the accelerating and excessive repercussion of the corona pandemic, the Egyptian government was resilient to adjust and to take all possible measures to mitigate the pandemic impact on the society and its needed, resilient network to enable the government to do. Egypt Post capacity to offer services on large scale made in the main pillar that the Egyptian government depend on the deliver society welfare given to an irregular labourer who lost their jobs during the pandemic. In March 2020, Egypt Post was able to provide for more than 1.6 million citizens in one visit. Cash disbursement, citizen registration, KYC, prepaid car delivery and activation. In April 2021, citizens received social welfare through their prepaid cards which can be used in stores purchase or online purchase sending, receiving money, remittance or with low cash from ATM. This is in line with the government policy toward encouraging citizens to less cash to site. Besides this pure of 7 million pensioners and more than 1 million sellers serving pensioners was another major challenge as they are the most vulnerable on this rise. In addition to impact, in addition to important government service were only available through post office. At the peak time of COVID-19, post office were working as normal and great effort had been made to keep normal operation to protect both staff and our citizens during services in office. Plans were made to organize citizen movement to the post office by notified citizens by SMS with date to receive their government financial aid. Pensions have been segments per month to decrease crowd as much as possible. Moving post office counters using POS and mobile routes to schedule and support and sports club in the open air to deliver basic financial services. The pandemic has forced us to rethink about more digital empowerment and more initiatives related with our customers. Therefore, we came up with innovative ideas such as our new super app Yalla app. It's a mobile super app to enable consumer to do payments, remittance and government payments and have easy access to simple digital products for services, investments and finance. Offering new services through ATM network. We have doubled our ATMs by end of 2020-21 to reach 2,000 ATM to offer cash deposit and withdraw but also to offer new type of payment services. To ATM such school expenses, electricity bills, traffic violation, loans, payment, gas bills, housing loans, mobile post office car, not only to double, it reached 100 mobile post office car but also to equip it is by ATMs to serve the very remote areas in Egypt with their low population and crowd districts wherever they're in need. Postal kiosks to serve all financial services and commerce, small packets, delivery and extended working hours to reach 9 p.m. and working days including weekends. Advanced logistics platform to keep customers not only well notified by shipment status but also make customers more interactive offering new methods of delivery by postal lockers for more ease and convenient delivery process. Finally, I would like to thank you all and thank the IB for organizing these events and support us to keep celebrating the great day that is really dear to our hearts. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Farouk. We really appreciate your participation here today with us. Thanks for sharing another great example of how the post has helped further financial inclusion for citizens throughout this very challenging time. Joining us from India, we have Mr. Vinit Pandey who is the country's secretary of the Department of Post. Mr. Pandey, you have the floor. Greetings to all from India Post. My heartiest congratulations to entire postal fraternity on the occasion of World Post Day. In these extraordinary circumstances, let me first of all thank the Universal Postal Union for bringing everyone under this virtual platform to share their experiences in tackling the pandemic and the innovative interventions made to address the emerging needs of the people. With the world's largest postal network of around 156,000 post officers, India Post touches the lives of every Indian citizen through delivery of mail, financial services and provision of government social benefit schemes. It is also the first access point, having more than 90% of its branches located in the rural areas. Offering a wide range of citizen-centric services, the post office has also brought under the ambit, passports, biometric authentication services, digital life certificates for different purposes and many other such services. At the very outbreak of the COVID-19, the biggest challenge in front of us was to meet the needs of the common citizen. In respect of essential supplies and dispersing the payments to the needy from their accounts and their electronic money orders or at the doorstep. At the same time, ensuring the safety of postal workforce has also been a challenge. Like for most of us, innovative to recover was not an option but a need of the are in the given situation. It's my pleasure today to share the experiences of India Post in two broad areas based on the theme of innovative to recover. That is about rolling out nationwide postal road transport network to keep the supply chain running and fintech-based doorstep delivery of financial services. The first initiative was development of point-to-point India Post road transport network to contain the spread of the virus like many other countries. The government of India had to invoke nationwide lockdown from 25th of March, 2020. Initially it was for 21 days which was had to be later extended. Passenger movement via air, road and train was completely restricted and cargo services were severely affected except for essential services to contain the spread of COVID-19. The nationwide lockdown resulted in shutting down of most of the economic activities, industries, offices, et cetera. This posed an unprecedented situation of interstate movement of workers within India, return of expatriates from any countries, crumbling of supply chain, challenges in distribution of essentials, particularly medicines, medical equipment, masks and other protection gears. The challenge became many fold due to choking of manpower availability also. Convince of time sensitive, low density but high volume cargo like TP kits, masks, clubs, testing kits, et cetera was one of the biggest challenges. India Post has primarily been dependent on the countries, railway, network and passenger flights for the conveyance of postal mail. With the lockdown putting complete restriction on these modes, India Post closed to the challenge and on 24th April, 2020 launched the nationwide postal road transport network with 56 national routes and 266 regional routes. The network connected 75 major cities in the country with a daily run over of over 25,000 kilometers and we have continued on that. And as on date, this has been sustained successfully and expanded to 66 national routes further connecting 400 plus cities across India. The national routes involve a total run of around 45,000 kilometers per day. With the confidence interested on India Post by its customers, special ties ups were made with health services and online pharmaceutical companies for the delivery of medicines nationwide. Moving a step ahead, COVID-19 testing kits have been delivered in special cold storage vans in considerably short turnaround times. Now we have upcoming plans for live monitoring of this Artean fleet through telematics solutions. The second area was digital financial services. Financial solutions provided by India Post have been aiding to economic prosperity and social inclusion in society for more than 130 years. During the lockdown period from March, 2020, India Post's payment bank fully owned by India Post offered biometric authentication based payment services from any bank account at the doorstep. Adhar, what we mean as base in Hindi, a unique biometric identity number, able payment services made it possible at the government benefits which have been credited to bank accounts of beneficiaries but difficult to access during lockdown could also be accessed at the doorstep through our postman. AAPS services are bank agnostic and are driven by the inexpensive infrastructure enabling low cost delivery of doorstep banking services to every section of the society and thus bringing forth the tone of a truly inclusive financial system. Government supported more than 200 million households by transferring cash amounting to 7 billion US dollars directly to their bank accounts. Around 700 million US dollars were dispersed through this Adhar enabled payment system to elderly, disabled and those who were stuck in the containment zones through post offices. Adhar based account opening and the public financial management system have been key instruments in plugging the leakages and delivery of financial benefits. In a bid to deliver banking services, every doorstep India Post Payment Bank has enabled more than 136,000 post offices to provide a complete suit of banking services majority of which happens to be rural areas thereby increasing the rural banking infrastructure by almost 2.5 times. Another important service developed by the post boss doorstep services delivery model to provide doorstep generation of digital life certificates to senior citizens and pensioners who now need not visit respective banks for generation of life certificate for availing their pensions. To conclude, I would like to emphasize that the past one and a half year has demonstrated the relevance postal networks have world over in this digital age. Post offices have become more relevant than ever before for connectivity and socioeconomic well-being of the people. The challenges posed during these tough times will guide our organizations positively in the years to come. India forever remains committed to building and prosperity of the global postal community. Once again, I thank Universal Postal Union for providing this opportunity to interact with you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Mr. Pandey, for sharing India's story. We see through your example that the post has been a very essential infrastructure to help deliver government services, physical, digital and financial. Next, we have a video message from Cote d'Ivoire from La Poste CEO, Mr. Isaac Nyambayao. Could I please ask my colleagues to play the video? Bonjour, je suis Isaac Nyambayao, Director General. Hello, my name is Isaac Nyambayao. I'm Director General of the Postal Service in Cote d'Ivoire. I would like to greet you and wish you an excellent world post day. I'd also like to share with you a few testimonials or examples of what our Postal Service experienced during the difficult period of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this difficult period, our Postal Service, like all postal administrations, has experienced difficulties, but we have still managed to position ourselves around our core business. That is being a social link between the population and the government. And in this vein, we have been chosen to deliver kits for hand washing, for disinfecting facilities. 500,000 kits have been delivered by us throughout the country. We were also requested by the Ministry of Education to deliver further products in the educational districts, but also to schools directly. 2020 was a difficult year in Cote d'Ivoire and we were proud to have been chosen to distribute all of our products but also the health products which I mentioned, all of these kits during the COVID pandemic. While our population was stuck at home, we were not able to travel to the interior of the country. So we strengthened our platform and our services to citizens. It's document.ci and it enables citizens to order birth certificates, nationality certificates and pay online and have them delivered to their home or to a post office where they could easily retrieve it. We're going to continue to work on e-commerce because our portal for Cote d'Ivoire products continued to function during the pandemic and we're going to help the national administration with a product e-hierarchy which has enabled administrations to assist their employees without the employees needing to travel. So we will continue to play our key role and during this difficult period we will continue to ensure that the post is a key actor in innovating for recovery. I'd like to thank all of you for your commitment and I wish you an excellent world post day and my greetings to all. Thank you, Mr. Namiaw, for sharing the post-growing role as a partner to the government. From Malaysia we have a video message from Mr. Charles Brewer who is the CEO of Post-Malaysia. Hi, Charles Brewer here, the group chief executive officer for Post-Malaysia and delighted to be with you on world post day. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on all postal operators and all countries across the world and like many of you, our postal team have been working double hard for the last 20 months plus delivering peak-like volumes and I want to say a huge thank you to every single post person and every single courier who's really been outstanding. Post-Malaysia has introduced a number of digital initiatives, none of which I'm going to go through today and instead I'm going to talk to you about Mel Rakiat. It's an innovation that I'm incredibly proud of and I think speaks volumes about Post-Malaysia and our 200 year plus history. So we're delivering one of these to every single household across Malaysia, 6.5 million residential addresses which allows Malaysians to reconnect with friends, family members and loved ones, something that's been incredibly challenging through COVID. So that's our innovation. Delighted to launch it in Malaysia. Delighted to complement World Post Day with it and I wish you a fantastic day ahead. Thank you Mr. Brewer for reminding us of the very important role that the post also plays in personal connections with each other. Joining us next via video is Corio de Mexico Director General Ms. Rosio Barcelona Molina. In Correos de México we joined the celebration of the World Post Day recognizing the history and the great social and cultural importance of Post-Malaysia around the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic Post-Malaysia regained its strength as a logistics agent to connect people without having to leave their homes. As well, the health emergency left us great lessons that have allowed us to reinvent ourselves through modernization and innovation of our products and services. We understand that the way of doing business has changed so has changed our way of sending. This October 9th we remember that the history of Post-Malaysia goes in parallel with the history of humanity. As a strategic logistics ally of the new and future generations we turn challenges into opportunities and we adapt to the new needs of the market without ever losing our essence and our mission of keeping connected to the entire population. In this celebration we also recognize the relevance of Post-Malaysia as a messenger that communicates the culture of a nation to the world and as small works of art that keep the culture alive philatelically so in Correos de México we will continue to spread this beautiful tradition. We will celebrate the right to keep us connected and connected globally. We will celebrate our ability to adapt and transform the new needs of the market. Happy World Day Correos a hug from Mexico to everyone. Thank you very much Ms. Molina for this very encouraging message from Mexico. Our last speaker for today's session is Mr. Chu Quang Hao the CEO of Vietnam Post who is also joining us with a video message. Today on both strengthening COVID-19 prevention and developing production and business Vietnam Post with the model Innovative Recovery has implemented innovative solutions to reach dual goals ensuring safety in pandemic prevention and business development. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the agricultural supply chain besides implementing flexibly the pandemic prevention to ensure safety in the whole network providing more than 1,000 farmer households to open e-commerce stores providing more than 70,000 tons of essential goods for people and more than 3,000 service points. Vietnam Post has well organized the activities for the community such as programs, postal, goal seed or the heart of the pandemic season sharing love which deliver more than 500,000 gifts to people in difficulty during the pandemic. Vietnam Post has also strengthened the IT applications to support customers such as the cash-counter system of the M-PITS project helping customers use many services at one counter minimizing waiting time the system of smart lockers supporting customers actively to receive goods to avoid the risk of infection because of contact during delivery. In the past time Vietnam has actively participated in the social activities of UPU especially achieved many high results in the UPU's international writing competition On this occasion, Vietnam will issue the stamp set 50th anniversary of UPU's international writing competition. The greatest goal of Vietnam Post on the way of development is to serve customers the people and the home community with the best service and quality This is also the driving force for Vietnam Post to constantly innovate and overcome difficulties and challenges of the pandemic. Thank you Mr. Hao I just highlighted another very interesting example of how the Post has helped move the traditional agricultural industry online to meet its customers That marks the close of our innovate to recover session Our sincere thanks to all of those who contributed today It is clear from your stories that we have been able to find opportunity amidst the challenges imposed by the pandemic We are encouraged after hearing the many innovations that you have been able to implement We are also heartened to hear stories of terrorism within the Postal sector As part of today's ceremony we will recognize in particular the dedication to Postal security shown by the employees of Poste Italiana In August Postal employees working in a sorting center outside Milan made a disturbing discovery Three bullets contained in a letter addressed to Pope Francis Every day Postal workers like our colleagues at Poste Italiana risk handling bullets, or even deadly drugs So today we have organized an award to thank them for their service and their courage in keeping our Post but also the world's citizens safe Could I please ask the Director General to stand and accept the award on behalf of Poste Italiana Thank you very much We also have Mr. Vincenzo Aurelio the head of Poste Italiana's relations with international authorities and organizations here with us on Zoom Mr. Aurelio, you have the floor to make a few remarks Thank you, Calia for your kind words of introduction and it's a pleasure for me being today with you It's also a great honor and a pleasure for me to receive this award by the UPU to Poste Italiana's employees working at the Pescara Borromeo sorting center who were able to detect and report to police the items containing bullets addressed to Pope Francis What happened in Pescara Borromeo in August this year is just a small tip of a much greater iceberg which is our corporate system for monitoring the postal flow aimed at assuring safety to employees and to the whole community at large Thanks to a complex combination of expertise matured over decades to detail the policies and the strict procedure elaborated by our colleagues of security and safety department and to the virtuous synergy both internally amongst the several function involved and externally with the local and central police forces we are able to successfully process many tons of items every day carrying out a number of different control steps including mechanographic x-ray as well as visual control in order to properly identify suspect items and prevent elicit elicit activities Thanks also to the trusty work carried out by employees in every single part of the postal chain we are able to effectively detect and report to authorities thousands of items per year thus confirming the key role of postal service for the safety of the full community. This work today is a great opportunity to put a light on this silent but crucial work carried out by every single postal worker every day which makes the postal trust party and a key element of the country's development and growth. Thank you very much. I'll give back the four to you. Thank you so much for being here to join us live today. As many of you watching here today know, the UPU also puts out an annual ranking of postal development across the globe. This is known as the Integrated Index for Postal Development or 2IPD for short. Each year on World Post Day we celebrate the top achievers in the ranking. Before we present the awards, we would like to show you a short video about this year's ranking. In the 21st century, postal services are much more than letters and stamps. The postal sector is a pillar of a country's socioeconomic infrastructure, reducing transaction costs and facilitating the exchanges of goods and communications. The postal sector is thus a key contributor to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in the United Nations. Yet the world is going through a challenging phase, as the battle against COVID-19 redefines the world economy and accelerates transformation everywhere, including in the postal sector. With the pandemic, postal operators had to deal with intermittent air traffic, labour supply shortages and increased operational costs. Unlike other sectors, they also had to continue operating most lockdowns, easing the delivery of surging e-commerce sales. In spite of its essential nature, the sector had been facing tremendous challenges even before the pandemic, with a decoupling between postal revenues and economic growth, as well as growing gaps in development between and within regions. Postal networks are considered to be developed if they ensure a reliable service, benefit from good connectivity, enjoy a high level of demand from citizens and have operations that are resilient to shocks. The integrated index for postal development to IPD, developed by the Universal Postal Union UPU, encapsulates this definition and provides policymakers, regulators and operators with tools to assess a country's level of postal development across four dimensions. Liability, Reach, Relevance, Resilience. Capitalising on a wealth of big data and statistics, the UPU's 2021 Postal Development Report contains the latest two IPD ranking, covering 168 countries. Switzerland retains the top spot thanks to stellar performance across all dimensions including improvements in Reach and Resilience. Germany retains the second thanks to progress in Reach and superior performance in reliability and relevance. Austria is third thanks to a balance showing across all the four pillars in spite of the many logistical turbulences caused by COVID-19. There have also been some encouraging results across the UPU's regions. In spite of the encouraging results of such leading countries, gaps between the two IPDs have increased. In addition, the reaction of postal operators to the COVID-19 crisis has greatly differed, although nearly all have had to rethink their systems of delivery. This transformation is particularly visible in the reliability dimension of the two IPD. Following the pandemic, average domestic delivery times have increased improvements, but more time will be needed before declaring a return to normal. Although the crisis is still not over, there are also grounds for more positive perspectives. E-commerce continues its ascent, constituting a reservoir of opportunities for all participants in postal markets. Thanks to a well-established global network across 192 nations, postal operators want to bank on the growth prospects offered by their international business. As a specialised agency of the United Nations system, the UPU can support governments, regulators and postal operators in their journey towards greater postal development and the achievement of the UNSD genes. And the two IPD is a great addition to their toolbox. Now, could I kindly ask the Director-General to please step up to the lectern to make his series ranking and remain standing beside the lectern to deliver the awards? Thank you very much. Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you might be. Despite constant disruption to normal life and business, the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have also led us to open up more opportunities for us to connect with each other virtually than ever before. I want to express my sincere gratitude to those of you who are joining us for today's celebrations here and online from around the world. The World Post Day is about celebrating the important role that the Post plays in the daily lives of our citizens and the operations of our businesses. With a network of 630,000 post offices and more than 5 million staff, post offers an unparalleled physical network for reaching everyone everywhere. Our goal at the Universal Postal Union is to ensure we achieve an efficient and accessible single postal territory that can serve the needs of the entire globe. One way we work towards this noble goal is by monitoring the development of the global network in each country. It is for this reason that the UPU in 2017 introduced the integrated index for postal development also known as TrueIPD that among other aspects provide us a ranking of the postal services worldwide. This year we are honouring Switzerland, Germany and Austria for their outstanding performance annual rankings. They have achieved the top 3 positions respectively in the ranking this year. This year's ranking is particularly significant given that the performance of our postal organisations has for more than one and a half years been adversely affected by the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. These physical dimensions posts suffered most during that period. Please join me to convey my special congratulations to Switzerland which has constantly been ranked as the best performer every year since the exercise has begun for five years. Please give them a big round of applause. Ladies and gentlemen, while we are gathered here today to celebrate those who led the park in the postal development in the past year we must at the same time also take away some key lessons from this annual study that will help us grow as a sector. The 2IPD study defines key elements that are important ingredients to the competitive and robust postal business. These are key components that collectively determine happy customers of our services and profitability of our posts. My congratulations also goes to Belarus, Brazil, Ghana, Singapore, Tunisia for emerging as the best performers in their respective regions this year. As we take stock of the results of the ranking over this last five years we have, however, noted growing developmental gaps between and within the regions. This situation has been expected in the past year due to the challenges faced by countries who are already falling behind the rankings. It is my hope that governments, regulators and designated postal operators will continue to innovate even with the current challenges so as to maintain a robust global postal network. More than ever before consumers now have valuable options for services that were earlier only available through the postal system. You may be aware our research team is available to do dedicated individual studies on request but at the same time affordable fees. We have carried out these dedicated studies for a number of designated operators and pointed out the final details of the areas that require improvements. Overall I wish to thank our designated postal operators for staying resilient and continuing to be at the service of society even during the pandemic. At the same time I urge governments and regulators to come up with policies and regulatory frameworks that prioritize postal services as a key national infrastructure to continue to the social economic developments of their countries. And for that I want to say thank you very much an excellent job to Switzerland and all those who have achieved success in this area and I wish you a happy well post day. Thank you very much. Thank you Director General. I would ask you just to step to the side here please to receive the awards on behalf of the countries who unfortunately could not be here physically with us today. The first award we would like to give is the third place to Austria. Although our Austrian colleagues could not be here with us in person we are lucky to have the CEO of Austria post Mr. Geer Puzzle here to accept the award virtually. Mr. Puzzle I invite you to unmute and accept the third place award on behalf of Austria. Microphone please. Microphone please. I ask you to kindly unmute yourself. Thank you. Okay. So do you hear me? We can hear you just fine now. Thank you. Okay. Very good. So yeah, dear colleagues, dear ladies and gentlemen the colleagues around the world Austrian post all the employees and I personally we are very happy for that award. Thank you very much. We are happy to be again under the top three postal companies around the world. I think we all had tough almost two years or one and a half years, especially the year 2020 was tough to all of us and especially also to Austria. We had some very special effects with high volume growth in parcels besides that we started the bank in Austria in April last year and we acquired the majority of the number one in the Turkish parcel market so it was really a busy year and which at the end ended quite well and so we started good in the year 2021 which is still under very special conditions but I think we all share this challenge and congratulations to all the other award winners for a great job in under very very difficult circumstances. So thank you very much again. We are very happy to be within this top three circle and we are looking forward to the future and to further collaborations with all of you. Thank you very much. Our sincere congratulations to Austria. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today on Zoom. The next award we will present is for Germany and that's for the second place. Unfortunately our German colleagues also could not be here with us physically but we do have a special message from Deutsche Post CEO for post and parcels Mr. Tobias Meyer who was kindly sent in a video. Could I please play the video? Ladies and gentlemen, we at Deutsche Post DHL are proud to have been able to improve our ranking one more time in the UPU comparison of postal companies worldwide. We have been doing so since 2016 and this makes us indeed quite proud. I think it has been a challenging 18 months for all of us with the pandemic challenging our networks challenging our employees in a very particular way and us all working hard to protect the health of our employees and continue to provide service to our customers and the communities we do serve. We at DPDHL have taken specific efforts to protect our employees and we are proud to say that we have been operating in all of our facilities countrywide every day during the last 18 months working with our people working with the authorities to protect us to protect our employees and the communities. Going forward sustainability has a big importance for us here in Germany but of all of us worldwide protecting the planet from climate change making a real effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also being sustainable in other ways most importantly also social aspects to have a good livelihood for people that work for us and the communities we serve. With those challenges ahead I hope to continue constructive discussions with many of you and continue the work within the UPU framework to make the postal sector a better sector a contributing sector to the well-being of people. With that in mind I thank you very much and hope you have a good day in constructive discussions. Thank you very much for that message and congratulations to Germany. To accept the first place award on behalf of Switzerland we are very honoured to have Mr Johannes Kramer CEO of Swiss Post Logistics Services here in person with us today. Could I please ask Mr Kramer to step up to the podium first to accept the award from the director general and then to make a few remarks. Dear Mr Hussain, Dear Mr Clevers, dear world postal community. First of all thank you to the day the UPU. I'd like to extend my sincere congratulations to the German and Austrian colleagues as well as all the other winners of the different awards. I've only really joined Swiss Post quite recently but sort of receiving this award the fifth time in a row is quite an honour for us as an organisation. Now having joined recently it feels a bit like sort of taking on the coaching role of the winning team in the second half and then getting to hold the cup in the end. It feels good but it's really a sort of the credits really belong to my predecessors and my many great colleagues out there. Now I spend a lot of time with the people in the field and really what I've seen in the past years I think the key to success is that our people they don't see our company as a provider of a salary they feel as being a part of sort of the engine that keeps Switzerland running and the economy running and sort of this certainty that the people that we have feel for themselves is really a large part of their motivation. I'm not only impressed by the people that we have and the way they serve the community every day but also by the appreciation that we receive by the community in turn. The people of Switzerland, I feel that there's a large degree of appreciation for the post and that's sort of great to see for our colleagues as well. Our ambition is to be part of the engine of the modern Switzerland. This can only function if sort of all elements the political the technological partners as well as our customers and then of course our and customers support us in this effort. I'm grateful to see how we are accepted as an integral part of the way the country is organized. I think our main job really is to make the lives of our customers easy on a daily basis and the importance of that I think all of us have seen over the past 18 months and I know Switzerland is not particularly a very big country but sort of seeing this in Switzerland and knowing how important it was here and then sort of transferring that to other countries it's really quite clear how important the role of our sector is in impacting the lives of our fellow citizens sort of in a positive way and I'm grateful to be part of this community. I'm grateful to be standing here today. Thank you for the award, thank you for listening to me and take care of your loved ones, take care of yourselves and all the best. Thank you. Thank you very much Mr. Kramer and our very sincere congratulations to Switzerland. I have just now asked the Director General Deputy Director General to step outside for a quick photo but we may move on to today's ceremony which is the best of the best letters competition. World Post Day is a special one this World Post Day in particular is a special one for the UPU's international letter writing competition as 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the annual activity. Each year, posts around the world organize the competition reviewing more than a million letters to submit their best letter to the UPU's international round which is judged by an expert panel organized by the UPU. The winners of the competition have gone on to do great things in adulthood. We've heard from them that the competition has truly changed or made a positive impact on their lives. One such example is Richard Nash, our 1986 winner from Ireland. He sent us a video message that we would like to play for all of you. I come from a small town in rural Ireland realizing that my letter spoke to the world beyond my island was inspiring and transforming. I was now a citizen of the planet, not just my country. Since then, I've come to America for university and have worked as an editor and publisher and coach with poets and novelists from Asia Africa, Europe Australia and the Americas. To be recognized by the world as a 15-year-old allowed me to see myself in the world and in turn see the world in all our colors shapes, sounds and words. Thank you. You changed my life. The annual competition is much beloved by our staff here at the International Bureau as well. Therefore, on the occasion of this anniversary we decided to engage them in the celebration. We asked them to please help us select the best letter among 50 years worth of winners. The race was very tight. There was a lot of competition but we were able to select one letter that stood out amongst all. A letter written in 1978 by Mi-Kong Ryu from Korea and the theme The Postman, My Best Friend. Could I please ask my colleague Giselle Caron who organizes the International Bureau side of the competition each year to please come to the stage and read the winning letter for us. Kayla. The Postman, My Best Friend. My dear Uncle P, since I advanced to the fifth form I've been busy with my schoolwork coming home late from school. There is of course nothing I dislike about it except that I can't see you as much as I used to. I've known you for a very long time and you're a very good friend of mine but somehow I haven't been able to tell you about me. So please let me take this opportunity to do so. Would you please hear me out? I once had a father myself but he passed away when I was in my first year of elementary school. Strangely enough I was not so sad then. It was simply beyond me to believe that he died forever. I thought he would come back in a few days but he never returned. As days passed I longed for my father. When my friends happily talked about their fathers I was sad and envied them. I even hated my father for being dead. One day we studied about writing letters at school. Our teacher taught us that letters weren't a wonderful thing that carried out our message to people far away. It occurred to me that it might be possible for me to write to my father in heaven and receive answers from him. That day our teacher gave us homework. It was a letter to someone we hadn't seen for a long time and wanted to see. I wrote one to my father. Since I didn't know his address I just wrote to heaven on the envelope. When other kids looked at the address of my letter they made fun of me saying how can a dead man receive a letter and who delivers it to heaven. I was so ashamed of myself that I did not give it to the teacher. I lied to her saying that I hadn't handed my homework. But now I had learned to write letters. I wrote to my father almost every day after that. One afternoon I was playing on the playground when I saw a postman walking over to the school with his large letter bag. I was so glad and excited to see him that I cried excuse me but then I was unable to continue. The postman stopped and like my own uncle asked to know what the matter was. Sir can a letter go to heaven? Who is in heaven? My father. Bring me your letter tomorrow. I'll write the address of heaven on it and send it to your father. I can't tell you how happy I was then. Every day after that I brought a letter and gave it to him. It was about a week later when I first received an answer from my father. I was beside myself with happiness but unfortunately I didn't dare let my mother know this for she wept whenever my father was mentioned. He never failed to answer my letters. He asked me to be a good girl. I studied hard for I didn't want to disappoint my father. About a couple of months had passed when the postman stopped coming to our school. A new man had taken over. My father's letters also stopped coming. I asked my teacher about the new postman not bringing my letters. Are you waiting for a letter from someone? Yes, letters from my father. Your father is dead, isn't he? Yes ma'am. Have you been receiving letters from him? Yes ma'am. She looked at me for a while. Then she gently seized my hands and told me that it was impossible to send a letter to heaven. I was told enough to know that. The former postman must have been very kind for he answered all my letters not to disappoint me to make me happy just like other kids in school. He acted for my father. After listening to my teacher I slowly began to realise what had actually happened. I cried loudly in front of her. I wanted to call the kind postman my father. I loved my father in heaven. My dear Uncle P if you were I could how could you forget about that postman? My heart will always be with a man who must be trotting along some street somewhere even at this very moment. Your sincerely Meek Yong Rian. Thank you very much Giselle for reading the letter for us. Those were very touching words from that young winner in 1978. With that our morning's festivities have come to a close. We sincerely appreciate your participation whether you have joined us online via UPU TV or on Zoom today if you are joining us from near or far. This year we have introduced a special staff appreciation ceremony in the afternoon. It will take place at around two o'clock and we'll give out two awards and welcome a keynote speaker Jim Lawless. Jim Lawless will speak on staying motivated at work during the pandemic. We invite you to join us for this special ceremony from 2pm today on UPU TV. With that I wish everyone a very happy world post day. Thank you.