Dear Editor,
During the decade of the 1950s I happened to work in three different locations. The first was at the Public Works Department, situate exactly where the successor Ministry of Works is today, in Kingston. One of my tasks as a Clerk involved effecting transactions at the Treasury, which occupied the eastern bottom floor of the Public Buildings at High Street and Brickdam. So I would enjoy the luxury of cycling down the scenic, uncluttered High/Main Street from Kingston to Stabroek, to conclude the official business by uplifting a government cheque to be deposited at Barclays Bank DC&O (now GBTI) at Water & Robb Streets – in the account of the Director of Public Works, who incidentally at the time was Rupert Craig, after whom one of our highways has been named.
What was convenient about this arrangement was that it facilitated my going to the General Post Office (already located on its present site) to conduct any related personal business: stamps, money orders, savings bank, parcels service which were then professionally provided, so that the comparatively small numbers of usually quite disciplined clients contributed to the dispatch with which counter-attendants treated them. The pavement outside was uncluttered by vendors; mendicants were invisible; access was easy; and in the absence of motor vehicles ‘No Parking’ signs were unknown. The result was that the manual processing of the respective services was prompt, and pleasurably polite. We experienced quality ‘customer service’ in those days.
Four years after I was transferred as a Clerk to the Ministry of Communication and Works, situated in what then was called the Ministerial Building – now downgraded to an empty lot directly east of the Public Buildings, on High Street. From there I could comfortably utilise my lunch hour to get to the GPO’s Parcel Post and back, more often than not with one or more books acquired from overseas.
When eventually in the late 1950s I joined Bookers and occupied space on the second floor of Bookers Universal Building in Church Street (now Guyana Stores) it would take barely fifteen minutes to skip over and do business at the GPO in North Road, and return to office.
More than half a century later the experience of access to, and comfort in, the services supplied by that agency has depreciated, and a level of productivity now fundamentally contrasts, not only with the past, but more starkly with similar service providers anywhere in the Caribbean Region, and indeed elsewhere.
It was standing and observing, for an inordinate period of time, the same manual process of the earliest experiences that occasioned the nostalgia I felt – waiting upon and enduring a service, inarticulately delivered by patently untrained personnel who themselves struggled with what they must feel was an unstructured process, but about which they had no say. I couldn’t help but wonder why the corporation continues to refuse to acknowledge the availability of relevant technological systems which could upgrade its efficiency, and contribute to its providing better quality and volume of services demanded by a larger and more dispersed clientele. Not a counting machine or cash register in sight, for example.
The particular operation at the Parcels Unit is despairingly symptomatic of the outdated policy, management style and operations systems, of what is euphemistically described as a Corporation – which normally is expected to indicate a modern approach to the delivery of public services (à la privatisation).
All the above is purely to get the frustration out of my system, when in 2012 it is not yet possible to post a mere book from a city branch post office to anyone in another part of Georgetown. So one is forced to attend the only Parcel Post at the GPOC in North Road – operated in the cluttered scenario with which readers will be familiar.
Today, October 3, 2012, one of a staff of six is attending to pensioners, and a customer who only wishes to purchase stamps for postage is vigorously ordered to join the lengthy queue. Back to the future!
Yours faithfully,
E B John
