STATEMENT BY SENATOR FRED MITCHELL

ON THE GENERAL POST OFFICE

AT THE GENERAL POST OFFICE

23 OCTOBER 2000

This afternoon I have called this press conference to lodge and strong formal complaint about the steady deterioration of services offered by the Post Office of The Bahamas to its customers. I do this as a businessman, attorney and as a public policy maker. We need a comprehensive statement to be made by the Minister responsible for Posts Dion Foulkes on what the Government is doing to arrest the alarming decline in the quality of the services offered by the Post Office. Workers are complaining about their working conditions at the Post Office and relief does not seem to be anywhere in sight.

The Post Master General John Saunders has retired and is believed to be on pre-retirement leave. This should have provided the Government with an excellent opportunity to say what is to happen to the Post Office and the services that it plans to offer. No such statement has been offered by the Government on what used to be in the past a potentially lucrative source of revenue.

The Government needs to say how the Post Office is to be managed in the future and what role will it continue to play in the distribution of messages and mail in The Bahamas and overseas.

In the past year, as a businessman I have noticed several factors, which I demand that the Minister address and review:

The Mail is getting lost and is often never delivered.

Bills from BATELCO, BEC AND other companies both at home and abroad do not get delivered on time.

Mail is taking an inordinately long time to be delivered between islands in The Bahamas. It routinely takes fourteen days for mail to come from Freeport to Nassau.

Mail to and from the United States takes routinely two weeks to be delivered in The Bahamas buy mail from the United Kingdom does not seem to have the same problem. Will the Minister explain?

The day mail service between Nassau and The Bahamas does not work as advertised and persons report lost mail packages.

Further, The Bahamas is in the scandalous position of mail not being delivered to each and every citizen. People still have to rely on post office for boxes for the delivery of mail, and many people either are unable to afford or cannot obtain a mailbox.

The Minister must say why improvements are not being made in the Post Office Building in Freeport that is unsafe and in dire need of repair with great chunks of the building falling off. Each year for the past four years the building’ repair has been in the budget but has been cut each year from the Government’s work.

The question must be asked of the Government whether or not it is not time to abolish the Post Office as a Department of the Government and create a public corporation which should eventually be privatized. Competition for mail and messaging services has become so intense with the advent of e-mail, faxing, and courier services that the revenue of the Post Office must be eroding. And the Post Office does not seem to be able to compete or keep pace with the industry.

For example, can the Minister tell us what the pace of computerization is in the Post Office? Can the Minister confirm whether reports of industrial unrest and work shortages, dissatisfaction of the staff with working conditions have anything to do with the slow and unreliable delivery of mail.

The Bahamas cannot to continue to advertise itself as a modern and reliable country when its mail system is antiquated. What plans does the Government have for the workers at the Post Office?

This problem has been festering too long, and it is time that this problem be addressed in a comprehensive way. Most mail being delivered in this country one would guess is from businesses that post their bills and receive their payments by mail. The unreliability of the mail therefore adversely affects business. It is time for some comment to be made; some review to be done; some answers to be given on this point.

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