Dear Editor,
Last week there was a letter from Rev Gideon Cecil raising issues about General Register Office (GRO) certificates. By extension there were problems about the delivery services offered by the Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC).
During this week I saw some other comments about the same GRO subject, and interestingly a GPOC notice asking consumers to pay a monthly fee of $500 to have them (GPOC) abrogate their legal responsibility to deliver my mail and tell me to go to a post office to collect all mail!
If I cannot be home for the postman then I can go to the PO between 7am and 4pm. Eh?
I would wish to comment further. Someone said that AD (after democracy) “We threw out the baby with the bath water.” Perhaps we did.
Those of us who worked with the government of the day then, must recall the Guyana Management Institute and Dr Ibbott of the Deferred Account Schemes. Remember that the certificates were designed for, and information therein printed by the Bank of Guyana. When the GMI was tasked with developing the General Register Office certificate schemes and system they turned to the GPOC as the delivery specialists to incorporate fast transmittals.
Desiree Edwards headed their team in our discussions and we developed what we called the GRO/Postcode system.
That system included our placing a postal clerk in the GRO, direct mail bags between the GRO and every district post office and application forms. A customer went into his PO and completed an application, handed it to the PM who sent in the bag to the GPOC clerk who passed it on to the GRO. The certificate was returned by the GPOC clerk in the next bag to the correct PO. The original maximum time fixed was two weeks, to reduce as progress continued.
A customer was free to query at the original PO and the system was geared to get back an answer. Urgent applications were to be treated by the friendly no-nonsense
Registrar or her deputy, and all other applicants were not allowed ‘upstairs’ in the GRO.
The GRO has always been a department of government, and perhaps someone will tell us why the certificates are still being written as against the original design to have them printed. But when we remove institutional memory and allow adhocracy, then the system is set up to allow manipulation and its attendant ills, as indicated by other writers.
Now to the GPOC. In other correspondence I suggested to them that ‘if you don’t know, ask.’ Again Rev Cecil has made some scathing comments about their delivery service. I always say that the core business of the post is receipt and delivery of mail. As a young postal employee we had all the Broadcast to Schools bulletins, the rice checks, the juror summonses, the penpal letters, cards, etc, etc, to promptly deliver. A lot of it was ‘free’ stuff but we had to not delay delivery or face the courts! In other words, make sure you take care of the core business, including the fact that you are bound legally to ensure that mail is delivered in delivery districts in the next course of delivery.
Again by law the Post Master General is the CEO of the GPOC. Up to BD (before democracy) this was never an issue. Then came AD, and concepts about corporation sole/aggregate emerged and the de facto head took over and removed the institutional memory to the extent that we now don’t seem to have a clear vision. Mail sortation and delivery is chaotic, and assistance is not sought to stem the tide.
Has anyone visited Sophia or some of the schemes on the East Bank, or Kuru Kururu to ask what survey was done and how the postman goes around on the delivery route? I am reminded that a postman at Wismar rode a donkey in the sands!
Just look around old Georgetown and ask how the lots are numbered. In most cases the discerning person can see the pattern, eg, in Bel Air Park it’s by eight, in Lacytown it’s by thirty opposite, etc, etc. Go into the new housing schemes and try to deliver a parcel you brought back from vacation and see the problem; the postman must learn/ know for delivery. You think it easy?
Then residents don’t place house numbers or letter boxes at the gate. Instead of that ad referred to earlier, GPOC should ask Leon D (one of the discards) to help define what he did as CRO to get letter boxes and numbers to householders. And bring back some older sorters to train the sorters in postal geography. (My friend Boney who I found by going to the Anna Regina Post Office to ask for directions to find him, gave this pearl of wisdom: “You gat fo live lang fo get old.”) They know how to sort by reading ‘up’, and won’t send my mail to two other POs before it reaches my PO.
In his last para Rev Cecil bemoaned our Guyanese incompetent approach. I would like to share some personal experiences.
I spent April 28 to June 4 last in Brooklyn NY because of my wife’s illness/death. As per her request she was buried the same day. The funeral parlour cannot bury without the death certificate, but they were able to access it online and provide me the ten original copies I paid them for.
I called Social Security and after some discussion I received a letter in the mail for a telephone interview on May 28. They called and we spoke. Two days later I received a letter confirming our discussions, and on June 1 my account was credited with the death payment.
Meanwhile same day I delivered to the local office the original marriage certificate with the seal, that I had to get up to me through a friend who knows a friend! (Yes a name was misspelt there!) What was significant was that every SS person who called, or to whom I spoke immediately offered condolences on my wife’s passing.
Last week my daughter called to inform me that SS had written asking for the marriage certificate by June 25 or my benefit claim will be denied. I called the SS agent and outlined the delivery date, and after checking she confirmed receipt. She apologized. On June 23, my account was credited the two months additional benefit payments.
During last week I went to NIS Pension section to make the claims here. There was one clerk with no other customer waiting. I approacher her, and was told to take a seat. After sorting some papers she called me to the desk and I asked why I had to sit and wait. Some indifferent response…then I explained my purpose. She got up and collected some forms and handed them over. My query then was if those forms will also be sufficient for the payment of unpaid benefits.
No it seems, as she got up and gave me some more forms. My mistake was to then ask what documents would be needed to accompany the forms. Rudely I was told that it was stated on the forms. I went across to collect my arrears voucher and asked the male clerk to report the rude behaviour to the supervisor as I was in a hurry to go out. Do you think she offered sympathy?
It seems to me that many management teams ignore the need to train and retrain staff and at their peril do not ensure adequate succession plans are in place to properly manage their organizations.
Is it not clear why we have these issues raised in the letter columns? Just get back to the basics.
Yours faithfully,
LA Camacho
