Wakefield, Trelawny, residents glad for returning post office
Published:Tuesday | October 10, 2023 | 12:07 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
AFTER TWO years of being without a post office, residents of Wakefield, Trelawny, are ecstatic that an unused market building in their community will soon be retrofitted into a new post office.
The announcement was made to the residents on Friday during a tour of the market premises in Wakefield by Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie,as part of a tour to review needed infrastructure work in sections of the Trelawny Northern constituency.
Mertela Hemmings, a 72-year-old, long-time resident of Wakefield, who was on hand to hear the announcement, told The Gleaner that having a post office in the proximity of her home would eliminate the physical challenge and inconvenience she now faces with travelling five miles to Bounty Hall to collect her mail.
“I well want the post office to come. I have to walk with a stick, and every fortnight I have to go up to Bounty Hall, and it is too ‘hackling’. Sometimes I wake up at 5 a.m. to go up there [to Bounty Hall] and, I have to ask if I can get an early ticket. We well want the post office to come here,” said Hemmings.
Marjorie Ferguson, a 70-year-old woman who has, likewise, lived in Wakefield all her life, pointed out that a community as wide-reaching as Wakefield ought to have its own post office to service residents who either have to travel out of the area or check their bills online.
“I am feeling so good, and I am elated to hear about that because it is not nice that a big community like this does not have a post office. You have to go elsewhere for the post office, and that is not nice, plus nowadays, we have to be getting our bills online. So I am feeling proud as a community person that we can get back a post office,” said Ferguson.
The Wakefield Post Office was closed in 2021 due to the deteriorated state of its building, and its services were relocated to Bounty Hall, approximately five miles away.
Communities that were affected by the closure included Dromilly, Unity, Bunker’s Hill, Friendship, Deeside, and Hampden.
Tova Hamilton, the member of parliament for Trelawny Northern, which includes the Wakefield community, noted that a container would be brought in to provide indoor space for the post office on the advice of the Postal Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ).
“The residents appealed to me to come up with a solution for this problem, and when I reached out to the PCJ, they indicated to me that they could provide me with a container to replace the post office but we needed a space to place the container. So I thought about this market where we are standing today because it is not being utilised, and I wrote to the parish council [Trelawny Municipal Corporation],” Hamilton explained.
“The parish council has requested some drawings ,which I will try to prod the PCJ to provide, but I am anticipating that the response will be favourable so that the people can have access to the facility,” Hamilton added.