Dubai: Thirty two years ago, he joined the UAE’s postal system as a sorter in the mail delivery room. Today, Saif Saeed Bin Touq, 53, is the Administrative Advisor to the CEO’s office, Emirates Post Group.
At the time when he joined, Saif had just completed secondary school. It was easy to join, as the organisation was keen to hire Emiratis willing to take on hard work.
At the age of 18, Saif had a keen interest in rally driving and karate and that is what he would dedicate his time to when not working. However, as responsibilities grew, he found it difficult to manage keeping up his work, studies and family along with his hobbies, and therefore had to quit sports.
The desire to learn and progress drove him to pursue an undergraduate program in Postal Services from Syria. This was 1995 - 14 years after he joined the organisation.
Eventually he was made Director of Adminstration at Emirates Post Group. A position he held for 10 years prior to his current role.
Saif said: “It is important to show people that not all Emiratis start at the top. For me, I started from zero and successively made it to the top rather than jumping straight to being the director.”
When asked about his journey with the organisation and what the greatest change was, Saif explained that the biggest difference was mainly that everything has moved from manual to electronic. This in turn has created faster error-free service.
Saif’s top-most concern through the years of working within the postal service has always been customer satisfaction, and he smiles as he recounts the few times drivers had forgotten bags of mail in the car or at the airport.
For Saif, there was no need to think twice about personally going to look for the bags of lost mail - as the important thing was to make sure that the mail was sent out as soon as possible. “There was this constant fighting with drivers over lost bags as each day we would send out about 120 bags, which includes about 400 to 500 letters. Of course, mistakes do happen, but the importance is to take matter into your own hands and solve it in order to satisfy the customer,” Saif added.
In his 32-year-long journey with Emirates Post, Saif has evidenced major changes not only within the organisation but also in terms of his personal life. When he started, he was an 18-year-old bachelor, and today, he is a husband, a father of four including three boys and one girl, as well as a grandfather. These high points have played a major role in shaping his life and who he is today, and becoming a father was one of the special moments in his life.
In light of the 104-year anniversary of Emirates Post, Saif is confident that he chose the right career and he hopes that his 32-year-long journey of hard work will be a reflection of his people and his country.
- The writer is a trainee with Gulf News
