Every year on October 9th, World Post Day is commemorated. The 1969 Universal Postal Congress in Tokyo designated the celebration as a way to commemorate the UPU’s founding anniversary in 1874.
World Post Day’s goal is to raise public awareness about the Post’s impact on people’s daily lives and businesses around the world, as well as its involvement in such developments. With a network of over 650,000 offices and 5.3 million employees worldwide and a public service provision from many governments, the Post system has unparalleled capacity to deliver services to anyone.
World Post Day is an appropriate day to pay tribute to postal operators, postal workers and everyone else involved in delivering the mail.
Theme of World Post Day 2024
This year the theme of World Post Day 2024 is 150 years of enabling communication and empowering peoples across nations
In commemoration of the UPU’s 150th anniversary, the theme of World Post Day for 2024 is “150 years of enabling communication and empowering peoples across nations“
Through postal networks, more than 1.5 billion individuals worldwide—roughly 28% of all adults—have access to basic financial services like savings accounts, money transfers, and payments.
An important financial service that helps low-income people weather income fluctuations is insurance, which 53% of post offices around the world offer.
Some Interesting Facts about Postal Services:
- In Egypt, the first postal record known dates back to 255 BC. But even before that, on almost every continent there existed postal services in the form of Messengers serving kings and emperors.
- Penny Black was the first adhesive postal stamp in the world to be used in a public postal system. It was first published in Great Britain on 1 May 1840, but it was not valid until 6 May.
- The United Nations is the only body in the world that is not a country or territory but allowed to issue postage stamps.
- The United Nations is also the only postal authority to issue stamps, namely US Dollar, Swiss Francs and Euro, in three distinct currencies. The first stamps of the United Nations were issued in U.S. dollars on October 24 in 1951.
In the wind and rain, postal staff brace the weather and countless other hurdles to deliver letters all year round. In the middle of the pandemic, as life was unexpectedly locked down, different hats were worn by postal service workers, helping everyone fight the epidemic. Postal workers in India have given all of these, rising as corona warriors who kept working in the face of adverse conditions, right from the distribution of testing kits to the delivery of medicines and money.
Each year, on 9 October, World Post Day is celebrated. The event was declared a way of celebrating the anniversary of the establishment of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in 1874 by the 1969 Universal Postal Congress in Tokyo.
