A total of 701,408 packets of Triple Stimulus Vouchers were claimed at post offices nationwide on the first day of voucher collections, Chunghwa Post Co (中華郵政) said yesterday.
The company had an emergency response team on hand in case there were any unruly situations.
Chunghwa Post chairman Wu Hung-mo (吳宏謀) said that he had inspected five to six post offices yesterday morning.
Photo: CNA
The system froze between 9:49am and 10:02am due to a shortage of bandwidth, and postal service personnel had to temporarily process requests for vouchers offline, but aside from that, the first day of collections generally went smoothly, he said.
The company also hosted a meeting at 5pm to discuss problems that occurred on the first day and find ways to address them.
Between 8:30am and 10am, 1,299 post offices distributed 166,000 packets of vouchers, Chunghwa Post said.
On average, post office staff handled 1.6 packets of vouchers per minute, which was faster than estimated, the company said.
The number of customers appearing at post offices for vouchers also varied. Taipei Beimen Post Office, the largest post office in the city, did not report a huge crowd after it opened at 8:30am. By 8:45am, only 57 people had come to collect vouchers, and their requests were promptly processed by personnel at four express service windows.
News media staff significantly outnumbered the people who came to collect their vouchers.
However, the largest post office in Chiayi had more than 100 people waiting in line within 30 minutes of it opening.
A 66-year-old Wanhua District (萬華) resident surnamed Wu (吳) arrived at the Beimen Post Office at about 4am, and was the first person to collect vouchers from the post office.
He said he came early because he worried that the situation would be chaotic, as when he tried to buy masks, but it took him less than two minutes to obtain his vouchers.
A physically challenged woman surnamed Chao (趙), who lives in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋), said that she chose to pick up her vouchers at the Beimen Post Office, because it has facilities for customers with disabilities.
She thanked the government for issuing the vouchers and said that she would use them to buy medical equipment and daily necessities, such as toiletries and shower gels.
Not all people were happy to receive the vouchers.
“The amount is too little. People in other countries are entitled to government subsidies of NT$10,000 to NT$30,000. What is more, I have to spend NT$1,000 to buy the vouchers first. What I actually get is only NT$2,000. If this is indeed a ‘Triple Stimulus Voucher,’ as the government has promoted, I should be getting NT$4,000 instead,” a man surnamed Hua (華) told reporters after collecting his vouchers at the post office in Chiayi.
Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chi Wen-chung (祁文中) inspected Beimen Post Office before it opened.
He said that 11.92 million people have either ordered vouchers from post offices or convenience stores, or linked their vouchers to their credit cards or electronic payment accounts.
Chi said 23.74 million people qualify for the vouchers, which means that the remaining 11.82 million could choose to collect their vouchers from post offices, adding that this could present a tremendous challenge to postal workers.
Taipei Beimen Post Office deputy director Tseng Li-miao (曾麗妙) said that Chunghwa Post has asked people whose identification numbers end with an odd number to come on Monday, Wednesday or Friday.
Those with even numbers can come on Tuesday or Thursday, and Saturday is open for everybody, she said.
People wanting to collect their vouchers at the post office could view the inventory map created by the Executive Yuan at 3000.gov.tw/hpgmap/ first to see the number of the vouchers that are available at each branch.
Triple Stimulus Vouchers can be collected until Dec. 31, Tseng said, adding that people are encouraged to visit post offices in the morning, when the weather is not too hot and there are relatively fewer people, rather than at lunchtime or before post offices close at 5pm.
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