Government is giving the assurance that all efforts are being made to complete renovations and reopen the Belleplaine Post Office.
This assurance comes from Minister of Home Affairs and Information, Wilfred Abrahams, following a tour of the St. Andrew building this morning.
He was joined by acting Postmaster General, Joann Busby; officials from the Ministries of Housing, Lands and Maintenance and Transport, Works and Water Resources, and Member of Parliament for the area, Dr. Romel Springer.
“The work has indeed started and we have commitments from all concerned that they are going to push it as hard as possible. It is a priority. I am going to update the Cabinet of Barbados as to exactly where we are, and we can use our collective influence to lean on those responsible to ensure it gets done as quickly as possible,” Mr. Abrahams said.
The Minister said he was aware of the concerns of the elderly, who have to journey further out to have their pension cheques cashed and conduct other business.
But, he explained that while he understood their concerns, the reality was that a post office needed to meet a certain standard in order to operate
“It is not a simple task of transferring all the operations for the post office to the community centre. A post office has to meet a certain standard; it has to meet a certain standard of safety. You have to be able to lock away money orders; lock away cash; be able to secure certain registered mail and that sort of thing, so it is not simply a case of transferring the operation of the post office to a temporary facility,” Mr. Abrahams pointed out.
However, he reiterated that all efforts were being made to push forward the work to have the renovations completed in the shortest possible time.