Bermuda?s postal service is failing with important letters such as bank and household utility bills being delivered weeks after they have been posted, it was claimed by Opposition MPs in the House of Assembly on Friday.

The result is families who can ill afford to pay extra are missing out on discounts for swift payment of their bills or are accruing unnecessary interest on outstanding bank statements that arrive late.

That is happening in Bermuda, said as she took Government to task on the management and investment in the Island?s postal service.

Speaking during the Motion to Adjourn she first asked when the Government was going to build a Paget post office as it had pledged in 1998. interjected that money which had been assigned to the project had since been re-directed to help pay for the St. George?s Seniors Residential Care Centre.

Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin responded it was four years since the money had been switched to the care home project, but in that time the money had never been replaced for the proposed Paget post office.

She said it was an example of poor financial management by Government. But the lack of a post office in Paget was only one aspect of a much bigger problem with Bermuda?s postal service, according to the United Bermuda Party MP.

There had been many complaints about the ?bulk mail process? ? the mass mailings of utility bills and bank statements each month ? with customers claiming bills fail to reach them on time meaning they lose the chance to claim a discount for prompt payment or, in the case of bank bills, accrue extra interest each day their undelivered bill remains unpaid.

Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin had an example of a letter being stamped at Hamilton post office on May 18 but not reaching its destination elsewhere on the Island until June 10.

?That is unacceptable. We can?t have this slipshod attitude in a country that?s meant to be sophisticated.? she said.

?Losing $10 or $12 through missing discounts or having to pay credit card interest impacts the finances of people who can ill afford it.? said the Island?s postal system was ?a case study ? you have an old creaking entity that you are trying to bring into the new millennium?.

In the past few months there has been ?a real attempt to move from where things were to where they should be?, said Ms Cox. The business model for the postal service was changing as was the way it operates and new technology was part of that process.

She said a business consultant had been on the Island to assist with ways of reorganising the post service.

UBP backbencher said it is now costing Bermuda?s taxpayers around $5m every year to subsidise the post service, whereas the shortfall had only been $1m in 1998

?Discussions about changing the business model or bringing it into the new millennium does not make one bit of difference if your Belco bill is turning up late. What the public wants to know is what are you going to do tomorrow. Philosophising isn?t enough,? he said.

And he warned that as businesses responsible for the bulk mailing of bills become tired of problems created by late deliveries they and their customers will increasingly use other means, such as email and electronic bill payments over the Internet to circumvent the traditional postal system leading to job losses amongst postal workers.