According to data recently released from Anacom, the Algarve is the area where the most complaints about CTT’s service arise:, with delays of almost a month in the delivery of mail.
In the municipalities of Tavira and Loulé, mail was regularly delivered with delays of almost a month. There are many complaints of bills and letters to pay for water and electricity arriving after the payment deadlines.
CTT has always had a difficult and highly criticised mission, but in recent years the delays in the delivery of correspondence have worsened: the postman's visit, which was daily, has been reducing in frequency.
According to the data from Anacom – Autoridade Nacional das Comunicações - there were 700 complaints registered in the Algarve during the second quarter of this year. Setúbal and Lisbon follow closely as the districts with the most complaints per inhabitant.
This summer, the delivery of correspondence left a lot to be desired: for three weeks in July, elderly people living in the mountainous region of the municipality of Tavira waited, in vain, for their pension vouchers and letters to pay for water and electricity, which all arrived late. Given the situation, the water supply services even give moratoriums to residents, who are unable to pay for water until they receive the invoice by mail.
Anacom explained that “if performance objectives are not met, the compensation mechanism is applied, which are converted into investment obligations, which should directly benefit the provision of services covered by the concession and/or the end users, in addition to contractual fines that may be applicable for the poor provision of the universal postal service, provided for in the concession contract”.
But what is certain is that several municipalities in the south of the country report delays in deliveries of normal mail, which reach almost a month.
The Mayor of Loulé, Vítor Aleixo says “the complaints are old and regular in time” and underlines that “with some frequency we hear serious complaints from people who are deprived of the timely delivery of correspondence for their lives. In some localities of Loulé, delays of more than three weeks are already being recorded. "
At the end of August, the PCP's Directorate of the Regional Organization of the Algarve denounced what it considered to be “the profound degradation of the postal service throughout the Algarve region with the complete complicity of the PS government which, instead of having recovered control and ownership of CTT, still recently extended the postal service concession contract until 2028”.
In the Algarve region, “general complaints and complaints about delays in mail delivery are multiplying, a situation that worsens during the summer. With retirees receiving their pension ten days later than expected, with electricity bills reaching customers after payment deadlines, with the regional press complaining that newspapers arrive at readers' homes two to three weeks late, with populations and businesses affected by regular mail and even blue mail arriving later and later. The most acute problems are felt in the most isolated populations of the mountains and the interior of the Algarve, but also in the large urban centers, there has been a reduction in the number of rounds by postmen who, like other workers, don't have enough hands for so much work”.
CTT says that the covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem, leading to greater difficulties in hiring replacement workers in the Algarve region.
Source https://postal.pt/
