Dear Editor,

Today the post office in Harbour View is to be closed. This announcement was heard on the Jamaica Propaganda Service, which also assures us the citizens of Jamaica that we are progressing at light speed with highways and toll roads up the tail, prosperity for all loyalists, and all is well with the world and the Chinese.

I wonder if anyone of the people who made this decision to close the Harbour View Post Office contacted, or considered, the people in Harbour View. Did they ask if the post office served a useful purpose, or if people in other parts of the St Andrew East Rural community have use for it, either? Where are the councillors for Harbour View and Bull Bay in this matter? Where are the so-called “representatives of the people”?

Several years ago when National Commercial Bank decided that the profit in Harbour View did not justify them having a branch there, they pulled out of the shopping centre citing a rodent problem as the cause for leaving. In the years since, they have been making record profits year after year, and the people of Harbour View and “East Rural” just have the added expense of going to the branch on Windward Road and carrying additional money on the already treacherous streets of Kingston. And the people of Harbour View were made to feel that they don’t matter!

Since there is no communication with most citizens of the east-rural community — unless one attends a ruling party gathering — I will share with them and the public that there are many elderly and retired people who now live in the old Harbour View, and East Rural St Andrew, who are former teachers, nurses, policemen, and ordinary citizens who have earned a pension by their hard work and dedication to this country. These pensioners collect the small amounts that they receive from the Government and go shopping for food at ever -increasing prices at the Harbour View Shopping Centre, which, incidentally, is the only shopping centre for miles. Now they will need to go to the Windward Road Post Office to join that line, and I guess these smug politicians think they all have a free drive waiting for them to take them back to Harbour View or Bull Bay to get their groceries. Well, those pensioners are not receiving salaries for life like their political representatives, so one day when the events of Morant Bay are revisited we will all recall when the pensioners in their wheelchairs and walking sticks walked to Gordon House and started the next revolution.

This time there will be no constabulary to save them, because some of those pensioners will be former policemen who will also be forced to make the journey to Windward Road to cash their pensions or receive their letters. And since they don’t matter, the regard for these politicians won’t matter.

I wish for all politicians their just rewards for what they have done to this country, which they have used for their personal benefit, and that they get tenfold the misery they have heaped on the people they fooled when we elected them, telling us that they would be representing us.

I am hereby asking all residents of Harbour View to write letters to their so-called representatives demanding the Harbour View Post Office be reopened. I am asking all senior citizens to contact their so-called representatives, and if you do not have, their office, where they can receive mail, then send the letter to the Houses of Parliament of Jamaica, located on Duke Street, to the attention of “The Clerk of the Houses of Parliament”; they are supposed to be working for us there. If you cannot get them by mail, then please send e-mail, several a day, until we get their attention. The constituency office for St Andrew East Rural is located at the Harbour View Shopping Centre, which I believe is shop number 26, on the south side of the shopping centre parking lot.

I have had enough of the dismissive and disrespectful tone and actions of those people who sit in Parliament. It is time we let them know that we do matter! If they cannot manage the affairs of the country, which includes safe, affordable communication of all citizens by letter at local post offices, they shouldn’t put themselves up for election to get the job.

Hugh M Dunbar

Architect

hmdenergy@gmail.com