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Military post office improvements come during career restructuring

  • Published
  • 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  386th Air Expeditionary Wing leadership came together to recognize the expansion of the installation post office, and to celebrate the hard work and dedication of its Airmen, during a ground-breaking ceremony at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, Jan. 3.

The expansion was deemed necessary after site inspections revealed that the current facility had exceeded its capacity for inbound and outbound parcels. Federal laws dictate specific space requirements for processing and handling of mail.

“It was deemed that this post office was way too small for the population it was servicing,” said Maj. Pablo Juarez, 386th Expeditionary Communication Squadron commander, when commenting about the post office, which was built when the installation was first built in the early 2000s. “It was constructed to serve around 2,000 customers and since then [the base] has grown to serve more than 4,000, not including transient [service members] and the five different forward operating bases that we also service.”

The expansion is designed to significantly increase the amount of open space at the facility, allowing quicker and easier processing of incoming mail.

Due to space requirements, mail clerks are required to move all outgoing mail outside prior to offloading the mail truck. This is because there isn’t enough space in the building for both the outgoing and incoming pallets required to ship the parcels back to the states.
The new design will also add more desk and computer work stations, which will help improve efficiency during initial processing.

The expansion will also create new space making it easier for mail clerks to inspect packages prior to shipping.

“This morning, we had about eight people come in at approximately 7:30 a.m. all with [footlockers] and suit cases,” said Tech. Sgt. Dwayne James, 386th ECS Post Office official mail manager. “Right now we don’t have the space, so some of our people were actually on the ground inspecting them; we have to inspect each one. We have to take time away from being back here to go [out] and inspect.”

The additions to the facility come at a time when the Air Force is reorganizing the administration career field, which includes military postal functions, from communications to manpower and personnel.

Juarez said approximately a year ago, the Air Force mandated that all the post office personnel transition from the air staff communications community, to the force support squadron community. The career field transition is scheduled to be completed by Jan. 31.