Dear Editor,
There is a famous saying “Charity begins at home” but for the residents of the Pomeroon River, there is no home. For the past few months the mail boat which used to deliver their mail cannot be seen. A group of residents told me that they are dissatisfied with the way this service is being administered; in the past mail from the Post Office was delivered directly to the mail boat at Charity wharf, and was then delivered on a weekly basis up and down the river.
It was reported that the mail is being left at a businessman’s place in Charity and he would send it at his own whim causing inconvenience to the residents in the river. Several of them told me that mail sent by the banks from which they took loans was received late, and they had to pay the banks arrears for late payments. This has been going on for a long time and they do not know who to complain to.
In the ʼ80s I happened to travel with the mail boat which was operated by the Melvilles. The boat would stop and delivered the mail to the residents at their landings promptly. I would know the time and day in each week when the boat would travel up or down the river; as a coastlander I would travel to Charity then board the mail boat to my destination. The residents claim that the mail service is now disorganized and the government should look at a more progressive programme and service because people have become fed up with the way they are being treated, especially in the Pomeroon. Transportation and communication management has become central to development in other parts of the world, a trend which is absent in these riverain areas where there is a noticeable gap caused by the Guyana Post Office Corporation.
In the elections campaign many promises were made to these people by the APNU+AFC, and I think the same boat which was donated by Mr Afro Alphonso to the President to transport the schoolchildren to school and back home could take the mail to the people in the Pomeroon River after discharging them to the various schools. This will considerably ease the burden on these people who have to wait for months for their mail. In the past a car and van were used to collect the mail from Georgetown at Supenaam. and on its way it would deliever and collect the mail from the post offices until it reached Charity.
The residents of the Pomeroon River are calling on the relevant authority to look into this matter urgently and restore the service to what it used to be in the past.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan