National postal service SingPost has yet another item added to their agenda of things to improve: keeping our letterboxes locked.

The Straits Times (ST) reported that several letterboxes at Block 128C Canberra Street were left unlocked for several hours on Thursday, March 14.

According to a photo accompanying the article, around 12 letterboxes appear to have been affected.

The paper added that a resident of Block 128C saw that a section of the letterbox was left open at 5pm. At 9pm, the resident reportedly said they were still unlocked. This means the letterboxes were left unlocked for at least four hours.

According to SingPost, in a statement shared with Mothership, the mailbox door was only locked by 9:25pm.

SingPost apologised for the incident, and said it will take disciplinary action against the postman who was in charge of that letterbox, and also provide extra supervision and additional training to him or her.

Here's SingPost's full statement on the matter:

“SingPost would like to thank the reader for reporting the issue.

We were alerted to the incident at 9pm on 14 March 2019, and a staff member was immediately despatched to the block. The door was locked by 9:25pm. Disciplinary action, extra supervision and additional training will be given to the postman. We apologise for this incident and seek the public’s understanding as we continue to improve on our service issues. The public can also help by calling our hotline at 1605 so that we can take timely action.

Mailbox security is a key area that we are looking into as part of our operational review, and we are exploring measures that are able to prevent such incidents from happening again.”

Another incident in Bedok

This was not the first time letterboxes were left wide open. On February 8, Twitter user @tanhuiyi posted the following, showing unlocked letterboxes at 621 Bedok Reservoir Road:

@SingPostCusCare Hi, the postman didn’t lock the letterboxes at Block 621 Bedok Reservoir Road. They are wide open and anyone can access the items in the respective letterboxes of residents. pic.twitter.com/y720ytTKXd

— HY 智慧怡人 (@tanhuiyi) February 8, 2019

18 letterboxes were affected. A resident quoted in ST said the letterboxes were left open since 5:30pm.

According to the article, a SingPost inspector only arrived at 9pm to fix the problem. This means that the letterboxes were left open for about three and a half hours.

SingPost said the Bedok letterbox had a mechanical fault with its latching mechanism. It also said that the inspector had made temporary repairs to secure the master door.

More SingPost stories:

Top image by Twitter user @tanhuiyi