Trelawny pensioners call for reopening of Wakefield Post Office, or a postal agency

Western Bureau:

Pensioners in Wakefield and the surrounding districts of Deeside, Bunker’s Hill, Friendship, Dromily and Hampden, in Trelawny, are expressing frustration with the current arrangement to access their pension since the closure of the Wakefield Post Office in 2019. They say that efforts to have a replacement or option of a postal agency are seemingly going nowhere.Oral Chambers, an affected pensioner says travelling to Bounty Hall to collect the meagre sum is not only bothersome but expensive.

“ I have to pay $340 to travel to and from Bounty Hall, and I have to spend almost the whole day in the sun. It causes a whole lot of grief,” said Chambers. “We need the post office back in Wakefield because this arrangement not serving us well.”

Additional expenses of travelling

Carol Brown, daughter of 90-year-old pensioner Christina Harris, says it has been especially difficult for her. With no one to care for her mother, she was forced to quit her job and stay home with her. With the post office at Wakefield now closed, she too is facing the additional expenses of travelling from Deeside to Bounty Hall to collect her mother’s pension.

“I would love to have a post office here in Deeside ... if they are not going to reopen the one in Wakefield. We are adjoining districts, and it would be more convenient than to travel to Bounty Hall,” said Brown.

Councillor Johnathan Bartley, who represents the communities in the Trelawny Municipal Corporation, shared the pensioners’ concerns:

“The post office was closed in 2019, and this was the most central location for pensioners in this area. It is very inconvenient and expensive for pensioners to travel to Bounty Hall (six miles away) to stand in the sun and wait on one clerk to serve them. It is frustrating.”

Bartley says he has been in dialogue with the Post and Telecommunication Department (Jamaica Post) since the post office was closed in the hope that Wakefield could get a postal agency (a degraded version of a post office) to make life more bearable for the pensioners. He says his efforts have been futile.

“It has been one excuse after another,” said Bartley. “We have reached the point where it was decided to retrofit a container to replace the post office, (but) it is now over a year since that decision was arrived at, and nothing has been said or done since.”

Up to press time, several attempts by The Gleaner to speak with Taneisha Bennett, the communication officer at the Post and Telecommunication Department yielded no result.