Malki Issa Addi

Malki Issa Addi (1 March 1917 – 29 March 1992) was a British colonial postal official of Turkish origin who served as the Postmaster General of Hong Kong from March 1971 to March 1977.

During his tenure, Addi oversaw the relocation of the General Post Office from Pedder Street in Central. This led to the completion and opening of the new General Post Office on newly reclaimed land at Connaught Place in 1976, while the old, classical-style General Post Office built in 1911 was demolished in the same year. In addition, he strove to bring innovations to Hong Kong's postal services, which included launching the Speedpost service in 1973—making Hong Kong the first place outside the United Kingdom and the United States to do so—and introducing the Accelerated Surface Post (ASP) service in 1974. The Hong Kong Philatelic Bureau under the Post Office was also established under his leadership in 1975.

The greatest controversy during Addi's tenure as Postmaster General was his involvement in the Hong Kong Government's submission of the Post Office Bill 1975 to the Legislative Council in February 1975, which attempted to completely ban air freight forwarders and courier companies from delivering commercial documents and letters. However, the bill quickly faced strong resistance from the business sector, led primarily by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, preventing the bill from being submitted for its third reading in March as scheduled. Subsequently, as the Hong Kong government suspended the legislative work, the controversy surrounding the bill temporarily subsided. However, in September 1976, the government proposed resubmitting the revised bill to the Legislative Council in October, provoking another business backlash. The "Ad Hoc Committee against the Post Office Bill" was formed to block the government's legislative efforts. Facing fierce criticism from the business community, the government ultimately took the rare step of announcing another postponement of the legislation on 21 October, meaning that the legislative attempt ended in failure.

Earlier in his career, Addi joined the Government of Mandatory Palestine in 1936 to work in postal services, and subsequently served in Nyasaland in Africa, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and the Crown Colony of North Borneo in Southeast Asia. He arrived in Hong Kong in 1959 to serve as Senior Postal Accountant, and was later promoted to Chief Postal Accountant in 1962 and Deputy Postmaster General in 1968. After retiring from the Hong Kong Government in 1977, Addi decided to emigrate with his family to California, United States, where he opened the Sunflower Travel agency, which he operated until his death in 1992.

Early life Malki Addi was born on 1 March 1917 in Midyat, Mardin Province, Ottoman Empire (the predecessor of Turkey) to Issa Addi and Elizabeth Khoury. Although Turkey was a predominantly Islamic country, Addi's family was Christian. In his youth, he was sent to Jerusalem, then part of Mandatory Palestine (the predecessor of Israel and Palestine), where he was educated at a church school, Bishop Gobat School.

Colonial career After graduating from secondary school in 1936, Addi joined the Government of Mandatory Palestine in the same year, working in a junior position in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs.

In 1950, Addi was officially appointed by the Colonial Office as an Assistant Postmaster in Nyasaland (the predecessor of Malawi), Africa. He was subsequently promoted to Assistant Accountant in 1952 and Accountant in 1955. During his tenure, he was seconded to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as Superintendent of Savings Bank from 1954 to 1956. During his service in Hong Kong, he was repeatedly promoted, including to Chief Postal Accountant in 1962, and to Deputy Postmaster General in 1968, succeeding C. G. Folwell, who was elevated to Postmaster General. As Postmaster General, he also concurrently held several related public offices, including Director of Telecommunications, Chairman of the Hong Kong Communications Board, Chairman of the Stamp Advisory Committee, Controller of Telephone Allocations, as well as a member of the Advisory Committee on Telephone Services and the Television Advisory Board. during the same period, the number of post offices grew from 59 to 73. Furthermore, whenever there was piling work at nearby construction sites, his office desk would vibrate constantly, leading him to remark, "...if the building survives all the recent piling work, it's just due to our good luck". However, it was not until Addi assumed office as Postmaster General in 1971 that the authorities formally commissioned the British Postal Consultancy Service under the British Post Office to conduct detailed studies and planning for the new GPO, as well as to investigate building a Colony Transit and Sorting Office at Hung Hom, Kowloon, on the opposite side of the harbor. To alleviate the urgent situation, Addi moved the inward parcel section of the GPO in early 1972 to a temporary building on the newly reclaimed land across Connaught Road Central, allowing the GPO to free up more space to concentrate on mail handling. At the same time, an enclosed overhead conveyor bridge spanning Connaught Road Central, which connected the GPO to the newly reclaimed land (popularly nicknamed the "Bridge on the River Kwai"), was fitted with a new conveyor system to facilitate the relocation. and was completed in 1976. The opening ceremony was hosted by the then Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Murray MacLehose, on 11 August of that year. Following the decommissioning of the old GPO on Pedder Street, it was eventually demolished at the end of 1976. The site was redeveloped for commercial use into the 27-story World-Wide House, while the underground portion was used for the construction of the MTR Central station. Additionally, the new building provided 12,400 PO boxes, nearly doubling the 6,700 boxes of the old building.

As for the Colony Transit and Sorting Office studied during Addi's tenure, it was later renamed the International Mail Centre, though its construction plan was repeatedly delayed. It was not until 1975 that the Hong Kong Government launched the first phase of the project, with piling work officially beginning as late as November 1976. To accommodate the construction of the MTR Corporation's Shatin to Central Link, the centre was officially closed in March 2014 and replaced by the newly completed Central Mail Centre in Kowloon Bay.

1975 Post Office Bill Another major controversy handled by Addi during his tenure was his involvement in the legislative work for the *Post Office Bill 1975*, which attempted to completely ban courier companies from delivering commercial documents and letters. Although the ordinance granted the Postmaster General a monopoly over the delivery of letters, it also specified certain exceptions. For instance, private messengers employed to deliver letters concerning the sender or the recipient were not restricted by the Postmaster General's monopoly. In the subsequent appeal hearing, the court held that there was no known offense in law to convict the courier company involved, and the appeal was dismissed. In contrast, the maximum penalty under the original ordinance was a fine of HK$500 and six months' imprisonment, with no per-item fine for illegal letters. According to his understanding, no country in the world had such a licensing system, so any courier company delivering letters to overseas countries, including the UK and US, ran the risk of violating local laws.

However, the *Post Office Bill* faced widespread opposition from the business sector from the very beginning, with the backlash coming mainly from the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, air freight forwarders, courier companies, and many local businesses with overseas operations. On the eve of the bill's submission to the Legislative Council, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce took the lead in January 1975 to organize an ad hoc committee, uniting the voices of different business stakeholders to express their desire to the Office of the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils (UMELCO) to continue delivering commercial documents and letters via courier companies. After the bill was introduced in February, the business community widely regarded its provisions as vague, unenforceable, and extremely draconian. They questioned whether the Postmaster General was attempting to use the bill to monopolize the commercial document express market, which would drive up business operating costs in the long run and force many overseas companies to relocate their regional offices away from Hong Kong, thereby jeopardizing its position as a regional business hub. However, due to strong opposition, the authorities did not submit the bill to the Legislative Council for its third reading on 19 March as scheduled. On 28 May, news emerged that the authorities would make substantial amendments to the bill, including concessions regarding the employment of private messengers by businesses, in order to submit the amended bill at the next Legislative Council meeting as soon as possible. Thereafter, the Hong Kong Government suspended legislative work on the bill, and the social controversy surrounding it died down for a time. Under the call of the General Chamber of Commerce, fifteen industrial and commercial organizations formed the "Ad Hoc Committee against the Post Office Bill" in October of the same year and held a meeting on 14 October. The meeting approved a public seminar to be held on 20 October at the Furama Hotel to invite public views on the newly revised bill. The ad hoc committee also invited Addi to attend the public seminar, but he replied on 19 October stating that the Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council had formed a special committee to discuss the amendments with the committee formed by business representatives, and it was therefore inappropriate for the postal authorities to send personnel to the public seminar. Addi also noted in his reply that UMELCO had been listening to views from different sectors regarding the bill, with the most recent meeting held on 7 October, and that such meetings would continue. The attendees finally reached a consensus at the public seminar that the provisions of the bill were unsatisfactory, and agreed that the ad hoc committee should meet with the government to discuss the contents of the bill. On 25 October, a government spokesman replied to sixteen questions raised by the public regarding the bill, stating that since the second and third readings had been postponed and the government was discussing the bill with UMELCO, the Postmaster General had no further comments. As the *Post Office Bill* was not submitted to the Legislative Council on 27 October as scheduled, the controversy gradually subsided, and the government ultimately never resubmitted the bill to the Legislative Council, meaning it was effectively dead.

Other postal innovations

Addi strove to bring innovations to Hong Kong's postal services during his tenure, leading an authoritative magazine to praise Hong Kong's postal service in early 1976 as the best and cheapest in Asia. The first parcel using Hong Kong's Speedpost service was sent on 10 September of that year and arrived in London at noon on 11 September, British time. To mark the occasion, Addi, who was on leave in the UK at the time, personally went to the British General Post Office to act as a postman and deliver the parcel to the first Speedpost customer, Peter Graham (later Sir Peter), General Manager of the Standard Chartered Bank Group. and further extended to Belgium, France, Australia, and the Netherlands in 1976.

In addition, the Post Office introduced an "Express mail" service in 1974 connecting nearly a hundred countries, providing another faster option for sending overseas mail. Regarding the recommendation in the *McKinsey Report* published by McKinsey & Company in 1973, which suggested that the Post Office should detach from the government and become self-financing, he revealed in an interview in May 1976 that the Hong Kong Government had rejected the proposal. The reason was that doing so would prevent the government from utilizing the annual surplus recorded by the Post Office for other public expenditures.

In terms of postage stamps, the Post Office released the third series of Queen Elizabeth II definitive stamps in June 1973 during Addi's tenure. Designed by Arthur Hacker, the then Artistic Director of the Information Services Department, the new series initially comprised 14 denominations ranging from HK$0.10 to HK$20, replacing the previous "Queen's Head" definitive series issued since 1962. Additionally, the Post Office issued a total of 20 commemorative stamp series during Addi's tenure (seven of which were designed by Hong Kong designer Kan Tai-keung), which included the annual Chinese Zodiac commemorative stamps issued for the Lunar New Year, as well as other themes such as two sets of Festival of Hong Kong commemorative stamps issued in 1971 and 1973 respectively, the Queen's Silver Wedding anniversary stamps in 1972, the wedding commemorative stamps for Princess Anne in 1973, the centenary of the Universal Postal Union in 1974, the Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Hong Kong in 1975, the new General Post Office commemorative stamps in 1976, and the Queen's Silver Jubilee commemorative stamps in early 1977.

As the Cultural Revolution drew to a close, Addi also initiated exchanges with mainland China during his tenure. On 26 February 1976, Zhao Yongshou, Deputy Director of the Guangzhou Post Office, arrived in Hong Kong at Addi's invitation to lead a Guangzhou postal delegation for an inspection tour and an exchange of views with business departments. The delegation returned to Guangzhou on 3 March after a seven-day stay. From 28 February to 4 March of the following year, Addi reciprocated by leading a seven-member delegation to visit Guangzhou, where they met with the Guangdong provincial postal authorities to exchange views on matters such as the mechanization of postal services. Upon his return to Hong Kong, he described his trip to Guangzhou as "fruitful". In fact, Addi reached the normal retirement age of 60 in March 1977. In recognition of his many years of service to the government, he was bid farewell by two senior postal officials from Canada who traveled to Hong Kong upon his retirement, and the British Crown further awarded him a Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal in June of the same year. On 29 March 1992, Addi passed away locally at the age of 75. After his death, the travel agency's business was inherited by one of his sons, Frederick. However, the travel agency faced operational difficulties following significant commission cuts by major airlines on domestic route ticket sales, and it ultimately closed around 2004.

Personal life

Addi was a practising Christian. In 1944, he married Alice Tannourji, and the couple had three children: one daughter, Ariette, and two sons, Sargon and Frederick. During his lifetime, he was a life member of the Royal Commonwealth Society in London, the Hong Kong Club, and the Hong Kong Jockey Club, and was also a member of the Jonathan Club in Los Angeles.

Honours

Official Justice of the Peace (JP) (1969) Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal (June 1977)