Couriers are gearing up for the upcoming Spring Festival business surge after a government directive was issued requiring all express delivery companies to remain open during the holiday.
During Spring Festival, each company must appoint a transfer station for distribution and dispatch of parcels, and provide delivery services to both bricks-and-mortar and online vendors, according to a notice published on the website of the State Post Bureau.
"The express delivery service industry is a public service in the same vein as the civil aviation and railway industries, so they should stay open during the Spring Festival," said Shao Zhonglin, deputy secretary-general of China Express Association, a non-profit organization for major express companies.
Greater supervision of the industry is also urged, after postal authorities canceled the licenses of 116 couriers in the past year for allegedly losing mail and poor sorting.
Such complaints plague China's fragmented but booming express delivery industry, where delay, damage and outright loss of packages continually erode operators' reliability and reputations.
The Lunar New Year, a week-long holiday that officially begins on Feb 10, is one of the bigger annual headaches for the industry, with more than 200 million people traveling across China, causing traffic jams and leaving express companies understaffed.
When Ji Lin, an online accessory seller in Shanghai, receives orders during peak seasons, she usually warns her customers that what is usually a three-day delivery could take up to two weeks.
"Fewer deliverymen come by and pick up the goods. I need to remind people of that or they tend to give me a low grading," Ji said.
Huang Guanjun, manager of the Xi'an branch of YTO Express (Logistics) Co Ltd in Shaanxi province, said the number of deliveries made in the city increased by more than 60 percent over the past two months.
With the Lunar New Year heralding a new delivery peak, every express firm in Xi'an has a full warehouse, he said.
Huang's company employs about 200 couriers in the city, two-thirds of whom are migrant workers who will return to their homes in other provinces for the holiday.
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