The National Bank of the Virgin Islands has said that it has posted some documents to me via the BVI Post three times. They have never arrived. I don’t know what needs to be sorted out first, but the second thing is the postal service. It is quite ridiculous that we have to rely on private services for our mail (all due respect to them for filling a need).
For years, incoming mail was delayed months — Christmas cards, for instance, tended to arrive in April — and now it seems outgoing post, which wasn’t too bad, is now disappearing down a black hole. Why are the banks relying on the post office? Mail never arrives. Maybe one day we will discover a postal worker with a container full of undelivered mail at his house!
Who runs the postal service? Which ministry is responsible for it? Does it have a budget? How much? Under what heading? How many staff does it have? How many vehicles? Why can’t the post boxes be brought back into service?
Fuel surcharge
Meanwhile, the public continues to be confused about the fuel surcharge, as do would-be politicians. The surcharge is a device to hide the rising cost of fuel to the supplier. The basic unit charge has not been changed for donkey’s years, but supply prices have continued to increase along with world trends. How do you expect BVI Electricity Corporation to buy fuel, pay staff, and build and rebuild the infrastructure, if it doesn’t generate enough income? The BVIEC is a statutory body, but I bet it has been influenced by politicians over the years in an attempt to make it appear that the surcharge is the cause of the problem.
For former premier
To former premier Dr. Orlando Smith: So instructing finance to write cheques to BVI Airways way, way ahead of the contract schedule was just bad administration? That lawyer you relied on seems to have received huge amounts of money over many years, and what exactly did he do for it? I hope he is no longer retained.
And the dramatic increase in medical fees shortly after National Health Insurance was introduced was also just a result of bad administration? And failing to put a cap on those fees was the same? By all accounts, something wasn’t right during your administrations and others. So “hear no evil, see no evil” doesn’t absolve you.