Dear Editor,
In the KN of April 28 2011, the report indicated that the GPOC will close three (of its 6) Post Offices on the Essequibo Coast….Aurora, Queenstown and Danielstown.
I requested the GPOC (also through the newspapers) to advise us of the closing plans Region by Region. I have had no response to date. I therefore will respond to that news item without that additional information.
For the first 15 years of my life I lived and was brought up in the village of Queenstown. During my fifteenth year I did a stint at teaching at the St Bart’s Anglican school, and a stint as an Apprentice at the Post Office in the village. Later that year I chose to take the appointment in the Post Office, where I remained up to the end of my 50th year.
The Post Office earlier had core management objectives…speedy delivery of letters and telegrams. The Law, Regulations and rules were so fashioned to achieve those objectives, and anyone who caused any delay in the movement of mails and telegrams was charged and dealt with by the courts. Even ship and aircraft Captains were conscribed by Law in their movement by the adherence to the mail acceptance and delivery requirements as indicated by the PMG.
Later in its development, the Post Office, added Agency Services to its core objectives, and made appropriate changes to its rules to dismiss and sometimes place before the courts those officers who “stole” customers light bill (and other such) deposits.
During my first fifteen working years I was mainly involved in mail movement, first delivering telegrams and mails at Charity, McKenzie, Danielstown, Queenstown and in Greater Georgetown. I also functioned at what internally is known as the Monitor’s Desk in GPO from where all mail movement, local and overseas, air and water, is coordinated.
During the next ten years the Industrial Relations aspect of my development formed through involvement at the level of the Trade Union Movement, culminating with a full time four-year stint with FUGE assisting the affiliates of that body. It was during this period that I became actively involved in the matters relating to the establishment of the Post Office Corporation, including leading evidence to the Justice George Commission, which examined and made recommendations as to the more
effective and efficient management of the GPOC after its formation in 1977.
From 1980, and for the next ten years I was part of the GPOC Senior Management system, heading the Departments of Personnel, and Operations separately during the regimes of PMG Braithwaite and PMG Doris. We were charged with the same core management objectives and took active steps to seek to achieve these and submit ourselves to directives and analysis from GUYSTAC and the Government of the day in all its different supervisory forms.
If these core objectives are still basically the same, it seems to me that someone somewhere is not being fair to the public when they suggest closure (of any) of those three Post Offices. The Essequibo Coast public road is about 40 miles long. Try doing mail delivery at any of the present Post Offices, and a picture emerges.
Whether it is going into Golden Fleece, or Mainstay, or Lima, or Affiance, or any of the several villages, the Postman is not doing delivery on the main public road!
There are several separate in depth areas to cover to deliver a single letter! When last has the GPOC done a delivery mail survey at any of the Post Offices? (In a previous letter I alluded to this need in areas like Diamond on the East Bank and Sophia in Georgetown.)
Let me share a personal point. In 1962 my first auto cycle was obtained from Sardar Mohamed in Danielstown. Those who know, will recall that my mother’s family is from that village. I was transferred to Danielstown, which district includes Dartmouth about 7 miles away. My father insisted that I could not even stay there with relatives but must live at home in Queenstown. So I had to ride to work from home daily… about 7 miles one way. Deliver two telegrams separately for Dartmouth and the regular ones for Lima or Windsor Castle or Hampton Court and you see why I thought I was a more conditioned rider and challenged my father to a bicycle race
(which I lost!). To save my system from burnout my father arranged for the hire purchase of that auto cycle (my first of three.)
It was for these long distances that the Motorcycle and Auto Cycle policy was adopted and loans and appropriate allowances granted to delivery personnel at Post Offices like those on the Essequibo Coast. Imagine the problem of distance in those days. Imagine the problem if Aurora is closed and the Postman has to ride from Suddie to Supenaam and into the villages and rice dams/roads! How will Charity and Anna Regina deliver mail between themselves and in all the intervening first depth areas? What model of time and human consumption was used? Hooray for the Postman?
Nah!!
But the other problem occurs. I have just obtained a copy of a magazine “Costco Connection”, (the shopping chain), May 2011 edition, where the United States Post Office is being analysed “At historic crossroad” because of its profitability and other imperfections. That public discourse seeks to put the mission and nature of the USPS under examination. The PMG is reported as saying “the fact is, the Postal
Service is still a very important part of the American economy and American Society.” He talks of the history of the USPS (it predates the formation of the US government), and reminds us that it is the postal customers who determine the future of the USPS. Politicians who control the destiny of the USPS seek to put closure of any Post Office in perspective: one congressman saying that he was all for trimming but “just not in my district”! This in a country where the cost of a
local first class letter is now US0.44 cents.
Contrast this with Guyana where the Post Office is constrained to charge $20.00 per local first class letter. What on earth can we do with twenty dollars nowadays?
And which bank will charge $40.00 per financial transaction? Of course the Post Office needs to provide universal service at universal price, but if the Board and the political directorate wants to keep charges artificially low then customers should not suffer the indignity of closure of any Post Office because “of the inability of (a) Post Office to generate sufficient revenue.” Perhaps we need to find a financial model to cost the social service content of the GPOC, and have the
Board and the Government of the day take that into active account. Imagine as a superficial exercise some decision maker suggesting the closing of a Police Station because of the same stated reason. Imagine the public outcry!
I also wonder what type of rationalization exercise was conducted by the Board, resulting in Area Managers increasing from three, or the Audit staff increasing from two, while the Training School is reduced from three, in this instant case the offices in Essequibo being reduced from six, or delivery staff having to double up in districts as is the present operating model.
Perhaps this explains why for instance the writer complaining in Sunday SN received late bills and had his light disconnected (not a singular experience). Pray tell us!!
In a previous letter I suggested that the Post Office Users National Council (POUNC) may have been necessary when the GPOC Chairman made certain announcements.
Now more than ever it seems that we should demand the implementation and appointment of this body so that members of the public could maintain some checks and balance in the face of these impositions.
We deserve no less from such an important economic historical and social institution as GPOC and those charged with making its Policy decisions at this time.
Yours faithfully,
L.A. Camacho
Brooklyn NY
