Oman transport: Mwasalat warehouse holding more than 2,500 unclaimed items

Muscat: More than 2,500 items from across the Sultanate have yet to be claimed, as Mwasalat’s warehouse is piled with cargo waiting for their
owners.
Ranging from food products, documents and hand written letters, these items have been sent by senders, but remain unclaimed by customers for several reasons.
Times of Oman interviewed Bader Mohammed Al Nadabi, General Manager for Corporate Support – Mwasalat, to learn about the unclaimed goods and how they are undelivered for weeks, and even months.
Al Nadabi said that part of the problem is that the customer does not know that an item was sent for him.
“They sometimes don’t know that they are receiving an item. The sender would send the item without notifying the receiver. When the cargo reaches its destination and we call the receiver to claim the item, he says ‘No, I don’t know anything about it’,” explained Al Nadabi.
“Other times, some items don’t have much value so the receiver would have second thoughts and tell us he won’t pick up the item, as it has no value, so it doesn’t matter if he receives it or not,” he added. He noted that that they have plans for the next stage of the company’s development to implement a mechanism to have more efficient communications between the sender, company and receiver. “Food items are the most annoying, especially liquids. Most of the time customers send oils, perfumes, honey and ghee, which are liable to spill, and they are often not packaged correctly,” noted Al Nadabi.
“With that said, we banned food items as cargo because it could affect other people’s items if something were to leak out,”
he added. If the items remain unclaimed when the claiming period expires, they will be handed over to the responsible authorities.
“We will follow legal procedures and hand over the items to the responsible authorities, such as the courts, to know what will become of them. Some items don’t have value though, but other could be donated to charity,” said Al Nadabi.
The final day to claim the items is March 31, 2017.