A court in southwest China's Yunnan province has sentenced a deliveryman to eight years in prison for taking half of the drugs that he found in a parcel, local law authorities said Wednesday.

The People's Court in Dehong prefecture recently upheld the verdict in the case of Zhai Shengke, an employee of a local delivery company in the city of Ruili, according to a statement issued Wednesday by Yunnan's provincial procuratorate, without giving the exact date of the final trial.

Zhai lodged an appeal after he was convicted of the crime of transporting drugs, sentenced to eight years in jail and fined 1,000 yuan (159 U.S. dollars) in the first trial on Dec. 13 at the People's Court in Longchuan county, where he was apprehended by police.

During a routine check, Zhai found two packets of methamphetamine hidden in a pair of boots in a parcel meant to be delivered by his company. Seeing the discovery as an opportunity to make a small fortune, the man only turned over one packet to the company and decided to keep the rest.

Zhai was later busted by police in Longxiang county as he was transporting meth to Lianghe county.

Police said there was no way to track down the sender as the delivery company failed to obtain any of the sender's personal information -- negligence that widely exists in China's booming delivery industry.

China has been mulling a new policy that would require delivery companies to check the contents of all parcels they transport, as repeated safety problems have aroused public concern about people using delivery services to transport explosives, weapons and drugs.

Once enacted, the policy will require customers to show their IDs when sending packages.

On Feb. 6, the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival, a man was severely wounded in a blast that occurred when he was opening a delivery package.

The explosives came disguised as a festival gift addressed to the man in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong province.