ISLAMABAD, Oct 05 (APP): World Post Day will be marked on Oct 9(Saturday) across the globe including Pakistan aimed to create and maintain a structure for the free flow of international mail around the world. The Day marks the anniversary of the Universal Postal Union’s establishment.
In many international organizations and countries, high ranking officials or ministers make speeches or issue proclamations on the history or achievements of national or international postal services.
Postal services may issue special postage stamps to commemorate the ideals, history or achievements of the national postal service on or around World Post Day.
These are prized by stamp collectors and philatelists (people who study stamps). In addition, special lessons on these topics may be arranged for school children and the postal services and their employees may receive extra training or recognition and attention in the media.
The Universal Postal Union in cooperation with UNESCO has, for the past 35 years, organized an international letter-writing competition for young people.
Many participating postal services use World Post Day to award prizes to the winners of the competition. From the earliest times in history, “postal services” existed in the form of messengers who travelled large distances on foot or horseback.
In the 1600s and 1700s, many countries set up national postage systems and entered into bilateral agreements for the exchange of mail between countries.
By the late 1800s there was a large web of bilateral agreements that made the distribution of international mail complicated, nontransparent and inefficient.