The cancellation of Saturday deliveries of regular mail will be included in a draft amendment to the Postal Law to be submitted to the extraordinary Diet session scheduled to be convened from Oct. 26, sources said.
The amendment by the government and ruling coalition is aimed at reducing the workload of employees and the cost of postal deliveries, but there are concerns that it will reduce users' convenience.
The sources said that the amendment is hoped to be enacted at the extraordinary Diet session and to be put into force by the summer of 2021.
The proposed amendment will reduce the frequency of mail delivery from "six days or more" to "five days or more" per week. In addition to the current Sundays and national holidays, delivery on Saturdays will in principle be suspended with the amendment.
The number of days between drop off and delivery of regular mail will change from "three days or less" to "four days or less" in principle. For example, if mail is dropped off on Thursday, it will be delivered on Monday.
The spread of the internet has worsened the earnings for regular postal service. With the amendment, Japan Post Co. expects to improve profit in its postal service business by about 62.5 billion yen by reducing labor and other costs.
The amendment had initially been considered for submission to this year's ordinary session of the Diet, but the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, which has jurisdiction over the issue, held off submitting it to have Japan Post Group prioritize dealing with the problems of improper contracts related to Japan Post Insurance Co.'s Kampo insurance products.
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