Thursday, November 08, 2007 So: Zip it By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
IN matters involving deliveries, zip codes play a crucial role in getting those dispatches reaching their correct addresses.
Woe to the postman, a bigger woe for the sender and receiver. Such is the case of San Fernando City in Pampanga and the other San Fernando City in La Union. Cebu has its own San Fernando, only that the place is a town, not a city.
(By the way, Pampanga has names of towns like Mexico and Florida. You don’t need a visa to go to these places.)
To distinguish itself from La Union’s “San Fernando City,” Pampanga’s component city calls itself the “City of San Fernando.” To those not concerned, this hardly matters whether the city is situated before San Fernando or after it.
Folks in San Fernando, Pampanga sometimes find themselves getting postal deliveries intended for those in San Fernando, La Union.
Why is this? The lack of zip code in the address.
In the age of e-mail and Messenger file transfers, does anyone still send documents by post? Yes. Bureaucratic documents, by their nature, have to be sent by mail and need not reach their intended receivers in 80 years.
Why postal mail takes a long time to arrive at our doors is this: the postmen get waylaid by fiestas. They can’t resist the lechon. In the Philippines, there’s a fiesta celebrated every day somewhere in a street, barangay, town, city or province.
And from the experience of San Fernando, both in Pampanga and La Union (and who knows in Cebu as well), the lack of zip codes also delays the delivery of postal dispatches. It’s a plausible reason.
The zip codes make sorting of mail faster and easier but not necessarily the actual delivery quicker. (Remember, it’s the fiestas that delay delivery.) For those who buy online, the zip code of addresses is required. Leave that blank and your purchase is not processed. But even if you have zip-coded your address and your credit card is maxed out, your purchase is not processed either.
This confusion over the correct location of San Fernando City or City of San Fernando has led to mis-deliveries by the post office and to the vexation of the Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Pamcham), a report in Sun.Star Pampanga says.
Pamcham plans to keep Pampanga’s congressmen earn their keep by doing something about this mis-location problem. Whether they would have the congressmen quarrel with their La Union counterparts over who gets the right to use San Fernando City or have them deliver the parcels themselves, Pamcham is mum.
Based on the dates of the ratification of the city charters of both, La Union got to use San Fernando City first. It ratified the San Fernando City Charter in 1998. San Fernando City of Pampanga ratified its charter in 2001. La Union had a three-year headstart.
With the fuss over this, why doesn’t either local government change the name of its city to Sanfer City? It’s shorter and sounds less religious.
I had no problem finding San Fernando City or City of San Fernando. The bus conductor simply told me this was my stop. I had the zip code printed on my shirt.
