Over the last few punishing months of the coronavirus pandemic, we've been telling you about how the global spread of this virus has had devastating and disruptive socio-economic impacts on Belize.
In fact, it's even disrupted the postal service!
About 3 weeks ago, on September 15th, the Post Office announced that COVID-19 has caused disruptions to the global postal supply chain. Because of this, outgoing and incoming foreign mail are limited to the United States and he UK only.
This evening, the Post-master General, James Gabourel, told us via telephone that the disruption to their service is mainly in the transportation of mail. Gabourel explained that the airline companies are the main carriers of mail around the globe, and so when they started to reduce their flights to Belize, the Postal Service was immediately impacted.
To date, that impact remains as severe as when the airport was closed. At this time, the Belize Postal Service is receiving mail from only two countries: the United States Postal Service, and the British Postal Service, Royal Mail. The mail coming from the UK has had to be shipped to Belize via sea transportation. The postmaster general explained that before COVID, they would receive mail daily from all over the world, and now that they are only receiving from these two countries, their revenues have been severely impacted as well.
The Belize Postal Services says that it will inform the general public as soon as foreign mail transportation is fully restored.
