EFFECTIVENESS OF THE DIGITAL ADDRESS SYSTEM - FINAL PRODUCTION

The address system in this country is very bad to the extent that, sometimes when people are filling forms and are requested for their address, they’d simply say they don’t know or have one, for which they cannot always be blamed. This is because new buildings are being put up always without a proper plan, and also ordering for a mailbox comes with high financial duties.

The Ghana Post Company recently came up with a solution to help solve this situation, which is the ‘Digital Address System'. But it does not seem to be effective or valued because even when you are filling forms provided by the government, such as Passport Forms and other forms from the Registrar General, they still ask for house numbers and postal address instead of the digital address which is meant to provide easy navigation system and possibly override house numbers and postal addresses.

It also happened to be that, delivery personnel of the Ghana Post, as well as other courier services providers like DHL, FedEx, and United Parcel Services are not effectively using the digital address system for the delivery of parcels. This sometimes makes it difficult for people to order or receive parcels from overseas, and sometimes in Ghana, and get them delivered to their homes or offices without receiving tonnes of calls to give directions, especially if the location is not well-developed.

In an interview with a DHL staff at their head office, Margaret revealed to me that they don’t use Digital Address for delivery because they don’t have software to help them navigate to the address of their customers. A look at their DHL “Terms and Conditions of Carriage – Deliveries and Undeliveries”  page also revealed that they don’t deliver to mailboxes. Therefore, they’ve resorted to the use of house and office address (description of location) for the delivery of parcels.

 

A survey I conducted with customers who often use the service of courier service providers, to determine how often they use the digital address also showed that, a lot of people are not conversant with the use of the digital address system. I came up with the following report, which will be updated frequently to track the improvement in the use of the system.

However, a tour on the Ghana Post GPS app showed that it is possible to navigate to a digital address from the app which is available on Google Playstore and Apple Appstore, although you will be redirected to Google maps or a third-party app. Before we look at how to do that, this is a short tutorial on how to use the Ghana Post digital address website to generate the digital address of your homes, workplaces, or wherever you find yourself. 

SEE ALSO: How to Navigate to a Digital Address

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