The absence of press distribution services is of concern these days to part of the population of Holguin. In spite of the advances in communication technologies, there are many who prefer to feel the news with the smell of fresh ink and defy the expiration of information, the inconvenience of waiting and the long distances to go to the Central Post Office in the Cuban City of the parks in search of their newspapers, where letter carriers play a key role.
Armando Arias, a resident of Reparto Zayas, who despite his advanced age has been walking two kilometers to get to the post office and pick up his newspapers for more than a month, knows it well: “what they allege here is that there are no letter carriers because they don’t want to work because of the low pay”.
Of the 14 existing sectors, four are affected in their services, “including sector 9, Reparto Zayas; sector 31, Ciudad Jardín and sectors 6 and 10 of Centro Ciudad Sur”, according to Claudia de la Caridad Sánchez Vázquez, press controller of this office.
What about the letter carriers?
The character of the letter carrier and the adversities he faces in the performance of his job is not a topic of these days, much has been said about this. The physical effort of pedaling kilometers facing the harshness of the weather from Sunday to Sunday is part of their work, considered by some as a “minor job” in the Internet era.
With the current salary scale, the monthly remuneration of the mail carriers is represented by the figure of 2,600 Cuban pesos, and although it might seem a certain improvement in the figure that their work earned in previous years, the scarcity of means and conditions is an evil that continues to haunt them.
mail, central, Holguin city, press, distribution
Yonni Mesa Hernández, a letter carrier of the Central Post Office, comments that in spite of the existence of good labor relations in the entity, they need more viable means of transportation to attenuate the physical wear and tear and the volume of work, greater stimulation and facilities that when lacking cause the increase of resignations and difficulties in recruiting personnel.
Ángel Luis Serrano Cruz, in charge of delivering weekly mail to the letter carriers, who due to the situation also receives subscribers who need to pick them up personally, said the same thing: “The poor performance of the service is due to the fact that many of the letter carriers are resigning because of the salary and the lack of resources such as bicycles, it is expected that the number of vacancies will increase, because some colleagues are on vacation and others are close to retirement”.
Sadly, the number of newspapers that Ángel has in his department is increasing, and the material expires due to the impossibility of getting it to the customer, who is often unable to pick it up promptly.
Goodbye letter carriers?
María Idalia Rodríguez Machado, director of the UEB Holguín Post Office, said: “Hiring postal agents who perform mail services, on their own account, through a cooperation contract, the double departure of letter carriers, the help of the postwomen in free hours of attention to the population to carry the press, the cancellation of the collection of the domicile tax and the strategies aimed at increasing the salary and the completion of the bicycles to facilitate the recruitment of personnel” are alternatives that the company adopts today to mitigate inconveniences to the population.
May happiness arrive on time…
This situation only occurs in the municipality of Holguin, explains Leydis Ramirez Saavedra, commercial director of the Holguin Post Office, who assures us that the rest of the province has a full staff of letter carriers and there is no such dissatisfaction.
Against all odds, the solutions do not manage to get ahead of the inconveniences, at least not in all the areas, where these persist, mainly in the city of Holguín, whose cost of living is higher for the salary and the sacrifice of a letter carrier.
Lorenzo Reyes, a neighbor of the south city center, visited the headquarters of Correo Central three months ago, because even in his area the difficulty exists, and the subscriber is still being charged for having to come to this distance to read old newspapers and proposes: “a possible solution for the distribution of the press would be to use another organism of the economy as the warehouses, or points of sale closer to our homes”.
We cannot allow the old letter carrier’s job to remain only in the memory, no matter how many advances the times and new technologies bring, because there are people who still like to read the press and others who make it possible for them. The task is to rescue the pilgrimage of the letter carriers through our Cuban city of the parks and that new stories come out of them.
With information of Dayanis Pupo Herrera and Carlos Rodríguez Rubio
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