ORIHUELA COSTA POSTAL SERVICE UNDER THREAT

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Hundreds of residents in Campoamor, La Regia, La Zenia and Cabo Roig are receiving notifications in Spanish from the Post Office (Correos) informing them that from 1 September, since they do not receive their post in multi- mail boxes, they will no longer receive deliveries at home and will have to go to the post office in Playa Flamenca and collect their mail. What is more, the mail will only be kept for 2 weeks after which it will be sent to a central depot and will be virtually unrecoverable.

This is a drastic curtailment of a basic service. Orihuela Costa residents have lived through similar experiences when, before 2008, there were no official street names and house numbers and much mail, especially official mail using padron addresses, went undelivered – including thousands of applications to register to vote sent by post.

After a Petition to the European Parliament by C.L.A.R.O., we did get properly named streets and numbered houses but during the changeover to new addresses there was chaos and one year masses of Christmas mail and parcels were undelivered, uncollected and sent to Alicante from where they never returned.

It is true that the majority of people living in Orihuela Costa have their mail delivered via multi-mail boxes and they will not be affected, directly – which does not mean that they are satisfied with the postal service. However, there are thousands of individual houses in Campoamor, La Regia, La Zenia and Cabo Roig – and potentially other areas.

If in these four areas, they do not organise the placing of multi-mail boxes before 1 September their mail will no longer be delivered to their homes. Organizing multi-mail boxes between neighbours in these areas is practically impossible. People living in individual properties are not organised in communities and do not have administrators.

More often than not, owners are not present at the same time. How can they agree with their neighbours in such circumstances? And how many houses will be considered necessary or sufficient to constitute an authorised multi-mail box and ensure postal deliveries? Where could they be located? In the street, where they could be vandalized? Or on the private property of one person who would have to provide access for the postman as well as often unknown neighbours.

Making sure that mail will be collected within the 2 week period it will be held in the Playa Flamenca post office will be a nightmare. For those who are present, maybe hundreds of people daily, will have to trek from far away to the post office in Playa Flamenca and queue to receive the attention of one of the two postal workers normally on duty and wait for their mail to be retrieved.

Those going to the post office for other services will be affected and will also be subject to queues and delays. For those who are not present 52 weeks of the year, bills, bank statements, official mail as well as private correspondence will go undelivered and uncollected.

The population of Oriheula Costa is multi-national and mobile and this measure will constitute a major discrimination in the provision of a basic service depending on whether or not a resident has access to a multi-mail box.

And how did it come about? Apparently with the compliance of the Orihuela Town Hall! Someone has sent information on the density of the population of Orihuela Costa to the central authorities who are looking to reduce the costs of the postal service and apparently has stated that Orihuela Costa is not a continuous urban entity. On behalf of the Town Hall, it has been stated that Orihuela Costa is divided into urbanizations where there are many individual houses.

These urbanizations do not meet the density requirements to justify home deliveries. If instead, Orihuela Costa had been considered as a continuous urban entity (which, of course it is for levying taxes and supposedly providing municipal services,) with the inclusion of heavily populated areas such as Playa Flamenca and La Florida, the density of the population would certainly have met the requirements for continuing individual home deliveries.

Why were we not informed and allowed to make objections? C.L.A.R.O. intends to find out. The Town Hall has said that the information was displayed on the Town Hall notice board. For how long and where? In Orihuela city or Playa Flamenca? And how many people visit the Town Hall and consult the notice board? For a measure which potentially affects thousands of people there should have been a major public information effort which would have allowed time for objections.

Once again, it seems, Orihuela Costa has been let down by its own Town Hall. Thousands may pay the price of a greatly reduced or, in effect, the removal of a basic service. C.L.A.R.O. intends to find out the facts and inform the public. We will try by all means possible to get this unfair and discriminatory measure reversed.

Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/43912/

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