HUNDREDS of people were left without Christmas parcels and letters from abroad over the holiday weekend following unprecedented delays at the post office.
The Postal Services yesterday denied it was their fault, saying the delays were the fault of the British Royal Mail and their counterparts in Greece.
The head of the service, Andreas Gregoriou said: “For their own reasons, Greece and the UK didn’t manage to pass on letters and parcels on time”.
“We received a message (from the British Royal Mail) that they were still holding on to mail because there was no way to send it,” Gregoriou said.
The Royal Mail had said that they could only ensure timely delivery for post sent from the UK by December 12.
“My parents sent us parcels on December 11 and we still haven’t got them,” said Jane Burton, mother of three.
“I was very sad that my children did not get their grandparents’ gifts. Their grandparents are far away and it means a lot to them that my children get their gifts on Christmas day – I was even tempted to lie to my parents and tell them we got their gifts on time!” Burton said.
Long delays in delivering parcels for Christmas – including orders from internet sites – have angered scores of people who have expressed scepticism over the Postal Services’ excuse that the fault lay with the UK and Greece.
“I’m still waiting for an insured and registered letter my father sent me on December 6 from the UK,” Melanie Rogers told the Mail.
“That’s a ridiculous delay.”
Gregoriou said that the Royal Mail had opted this year to send letters and parcels on indirect, rather than direct flights to Larnaca, sometimes via Greece, which had resulted in further delays.
A number of strikes and work-to-rule measures have made flights and post via Greece unreliable in recent months, he said.
But Burton says that when pushed, postal workers have admitted that parcels have been stuck at Larnaca.
“My husband went over to the post office which was full of complaining customers. They made the employee call the sorting office and track the parcels and she told us that they were still in Larnaca,” Burton said.
Additionally Cypriot air traffic controllers and civil servants including postal workers staged strikes in December over austerity measures.
Gregoriou did admit there were delays in Larnaca but he said those were “isolated incidents”.
An announcement from the postal service yesterday said that although disruption in incoming post from Greece and the UK was “causing problems” in the sorting offices, they were doing their best to send post on time.
“We are trying to be organised so we can respond to the increased workload,” Gregoriou said.
For the month of December postal traffic increased to a minimum of 615,000 individual items whereas on an average month traffic is about 550,000. Thousands more parcels are received and sent in December, from about 9,000 on an average month to about 11,500 on December.
Despite the increased workload Gregoriou admitted that the post office had not hired extra staff because of cuts in spending.
Postal services have only been working normal hours, sorting any international post received by 7am each day to be forwarded to relevant centres in Cyprus, Gregoriou said.
“We’ve been waiting for weeks for parcels that were long ago dispatched from the UK and every time we go to complain at the post office we’re told it’s the UK’s fault,” Connie Hughes told the Mail.
Hughes refused to believe that the Royal Mail was to blame.
“This has been going on for years and years. Blaming the Brits is a favourite,” Hughes said.
Postal service said they had relayed people’s concerns to the relevant services in Greece and the UK apologising to their customers “for any upheaval caused”.
