Singapore Airlines has suspended carrying Bangladesh Post Office's mails and parcels, cutting off the country's postal links with 14 countries with sizable Bangladeshi population, officials said Friday.
The carrier took the decision on Thursday after the BPO failed to clear dues worth Tk 36.7 million it owes to the biggest airlines in South East Asia by May 21.
"The airlines told us that they would not carry our mails and parcels as we have failed to clear their dues in time," said a senior BPO official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The airlines had initially set May 14 as the deadline to clear the dues, piled up after months of non-payment by the BPO. After a request from the BPO chiefs, the airlines extended its deadline by another week.
"We urged the Singapore Airlines to continue to carry our mails and parcels for a few more days as we are trying to clear the dues through the Finance Ministry," he said.
"But they did not listen to our request this time," he added.
Officials said the suspension would automatically lead to cut of Bangladesh's postal links with 14 countries across the globe with a large Bangladeshi population.
The countries are Singapore, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia Singapore, Sri Lanka, Brunei, the Philippines and the Netherlands.
Most of these countries have sizable Bangladeshi population who regularly receive mails and parcels from their relatives at home via the BPO, which is still the cheapest among the country's private and public postal services.
However, the BPO said it would continue to book mails and parcels bound to these countries for the next few days.
"We've not stopped booking mails and parcels for those countries as we are hopeful that the government would clear the dues very soon," said another official.
"But if we cannot secure fund from the government in the next few days, we will have no choice but to stop booking mails and parcels," he added.
Earlier in 2005, Thai Airways and British Airways stopped airlifting BPO mails and parcels due to 'huge' backlog in outstanding mail carrying charges.
As a result, the BPO is now sending mails to some European countries through transits in the Persian Gulf nations.
But it has resulted in delivery delays and in some cases missing of the mails and parcels, BPO officials said.
The suspension comes just weeks after the Universal Postal Union (UPU), the apex body of world's postal departments, made similar warnings, saying its members would stop taking BPO mails if it fails to clear Tk 260 million arrears by June.
The BPO chief Mobassher Ur Rahman had earlier said the UPU threat is 'serious' as it may cut the country's postal link with the rest of the world.
The BPO pays around Tk 60 million a year as service charge and terminal dues to the members of the world postal union. But it failed to make any payment in the last four years.
"Our image has been greatly tarnished because of the payment delays," Rahman had said, adding the "BPO is now known as bad pay master to some airlines and the UPU."
Mails, parcels and Express Mail Service sent to overseas account for some half the annual revenues of the perennial loss-making BPO, which incurred a loss of around Tk 1.25 billion in the last fiscal year.
