Several Solution Barbados candidates contesting the 2022 General Elections have accused the Barbados Postal Service (BPS) of failing to distribute their election circulars.
Some candidates collected hundreds of circulars from the Eagle Hall Post Office on Tuesday and were walking around themselves distributing them to householders, hours before the midnight deadline for election campaigning to end.
Solutions Barbados candidate for St Michael West Victorine Wilson confirmed to Barbados TODAY that she and candidate for St Michael West Central Angela Edey went to the Eagle Hall Post Office on Tuesday afternoon with the intention to collect any remaining circulars that were not distributed by mail, to find “the majority” of the correspondence still at the post office.
Wilson said she spoke to workers at the St Michael based post office and they informed her that some of her circulars were delivered to homes in St Michael West.
However, Wilson argued that she was however told by constituents that they never got her circular in the mail. She said post office personnel handed back over hundreds of circulars to her.
“I had to make a phone call to a gentleman that I met once and I called him because he is from the St Michael West area and I asked him to get together some boys to help me get the circulars out. I had to get some strangers to distribute them. I do not think this is fair.
“You believe I come to the post office to see if any left back and when they went and check they come out with all of these stacks of circulars. It doesn’t even look as though any of these left the post office at all. They told me that some of the postmen said that when they went along, they saw some of the people with circulars already. I only had less than 100 that we gave out. Why does the post office have thousands of circulars belonging to me? I do not buy this story,” Wilson said.
Meanwhile, Solutions Barbados leader Grenville Phillips II confirmed that he received complaints from several other candidates regarding the failure to deliver circulars.
But Phillips, who said all of Solutions Barbados candidates’ circulars were sent to the post offices on Monday January 10 before the Thursday January 13 deadline, indicated that he urged all affected candidates to go around and distribute whatever remaining circulars they have.
“It has happened in some other areas and complaining is not going to solve anything at this time. We have learnt our lesson for the next time,” Phillips said.
Meanwhile, St Michael Central candidate Robert Touissaint said while the majority of his circulars had been distributed, he swung into action to assist Wilson and Edey in getting theirs out to constituents.
“This is something that we dealt with in the last election. Mr Grenville sent all of these here to the post offices,” Touissaint said.
A member of the post office’s management team declined comment noting that they were not authorized to speak to the media. Barbados TODAY’s efforts to contact the Postmaster General proved futile.
anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb
