Get the postcode right for this heritage city

I WOULD highly appreciate if Pos Malaysia could correctly refer the postcode of Penang’s capital from “Pulau Pinang” to “George Town”.

The term Pulau Pinang or Penang should first mean the state, over that of, the island or in Pos Malaysia’s case, the capital.

Thus, the main post office on Downing Street should tactfully be referred to as Pejabat Pos Besar George Town, just as how it is for other state capitals.

While the National Registration Department states the postcode in our MyKads correctly (albeit spelt as Georgetown, without a space), it is a different story on the streets.

In Beach Street alone, the signs on the street, the police station and the fire department, all have their postcodes respectively as 10300 P.Pinang, 10300 Timur Laut and 10300 Lebuh Pantai!

They are all wrongly represented because the correct way of writing it is 10300 George Town.

When searching for a postcode through Pos Malaysia’s website, ‘Georgetown’ returned zero results and ‘Pulau Pinang’ returned mostly post office post-box numbers.

Unlike the postcodes for other towns and cities in Malaysia that can be searched from their names, the ones here has to be searched through the names of the individual roads.

Let me give a clearer example of what the situation is now, with a fictitious address:

If I am staying at Jalan Pasembor, 10100 George Town, then the postcode shown on the MyKad will be 10100 Georgetown.

If I step out of my house and look at the street sign, it will be showing 10100 Pulau Pinang.

Next, if I have a client searching for my postcode on-line by keying in words such as George Town, Georgetown and even Pulau Pinang, he will be unsuccessful. He has to, instead, key in “Jalan Pasembor” to get my postcode!

To all institutions, business establishments and residents in the capital, ask yourselves, do you not have an iota of pride that George Town is a Unesco World Heritage site? Shamefully, we have not even officially listed George Town as a city till today, even though the status given by Queen Elizabeth II on Jan 1, 1957 was never revoked.

Remember, Penang or Pulau Pinang is very generic while George Town is special and unique.

It makes me sad that I have to actually write this to the media to get the correction done. No other city or town in Malaysia seems to have such an issue.

Therefore, lets get the postcodes in our world heritage George Town, corrected and standardised.

For the record, every Jan 1 and July 7 are state-level public holidays for the celebration of George Town City Day and George Town World Heritage Inscription Day respectively.

HERITAGE LOVER

George Town