With more than 14,000 pieces of undeliverable mail, some weeks and an average of 90,000 letters being returned each quarter the Cayman Islands’ central sorting office in Grand Cayman is literally being buried in undeliverable mail. 

Mails Manager Verdum Terry said that between July and September the post office returned 101,839 mails, October to December 74,791 were returned and from January to March 100,295 were returned.

Acting Post Master General Anthony Williams told reporters during a tour of the Airport Post Office facilities where all the sorting is undertaken, that the main culprits are overseas businesses.

Mail is not delivered in the Cayman Islands. Residents apply for a post office box and pick up their post there. However, when the government introduced street and house numbers many senders left off the post office box number and included the street or lot number.

Mr Williams added that mails sent to defunct companies also add to the mail mountain.

“We get a lot of letters for companies that no longer exist and we have to sort these out and send them back as undelivered,” he said.

The APG said that the postal service does not have a delivery system; so, even if they knew the business or person to whom the mails are going there is no mechanism in place to have it delivered.
Donald Solomon, senior postal officer, keeps count, in his diary, of the number of mails he has sent back.

“This is the count for one week,” he said flipping through a diary, and coming to halt at a page, which had a figure of close to 14,500 returned mail. “The lowest figure I have here is more than 4,800,” he said.

Mr Solomon’s main duty is to sort out all the undeliverable mail, process them and return them. That means, he must carefully examine each piece of mail and indicate to the posters why their mail is not delivered.