Crippled post office copes with holiday rush
Every December one of the busiest places in Belize is the post office. But in the wake of September’s spectacular fire, this year’s rush of mail is presenting a special challenge. Today News 5’s Jacqueline Woods stopped by to see how our postal workers are coping.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
They haven’t had time to count just how many parcels the Belize post office handles around this time of the year, but the people on North Front Street certainly have their hands full.
James Gabriel, Counter Supervisor, Belize Post Office
“Around this time we have the post men and the parcel post section that works overtime. And you find out that in the evenings instead of going home at 5:00, they are here all up to 9:00 in the night at times, trying to prepare deliveries for the next day.”
Two months ago, the Belize Post Office was hit hard when their counter, post office box and mail service section received extensive water damage as a result of the fire at Paslow Building. Those services were transferred next door to parcel post…creating a jam. However, counter supervisor James Gabriel, says that despite the congestion and the mail increase, they are making the best of a bad situation.
James Gabriel
“If you look around, you notice the congestion. To the front where we have the customers come in is usually congested. You have people coming in who have post office boxes, they need to get their mails from over the counter and that adds to the congestion. We have a section of the mail room, the mail sorting room over this side, we have the parcel post over this side and we also have the counter service over this side. So it is totally congested but what happen, we have gotten somewhat adjusted because the fire was sometime in September, if I can recall, and we have been trying to adjust over that period of time.”
Though the situation is enough to turn you hair as white as Santa’s, the staff remains courteous and willing to serve the public. To accommodate their customers during the season, the post office has also extended their service to Saturday. But Gabriel says that while there have been no major delays, customers have expressed some dissatisfaction about the overcrowding.
James Gabriel
“I would certainly ask them to be patient with us, to bear with us and to take into consideration that we have been through a turmoil, the fire recently, and as such we are doing our best to facilitate them. We have customers that come in from time to time a bit disgruntled because they don’t have the service of the mail box. But what happen is that we are giving them that personalized service so to speak, in that, they come into the post office. They give us their number of their box, they show us their post office box key, they show us their I.D. and then we give them the mails for their post office boxes.”
To ensure that your outgoing reaches its destination by Christmas, you are advised that the last day to send it is Wednesday, December eighteenth. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
The Belize Post Office is open Monday to Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Fridays from 8:00 to 4:30, and Saturdays from 9:00 to 5:00.
