Bay of Plenty locals respond to proposed regional banking and postal centers

New Zealand post offices will soon cease to exist as the company plans to close the remaining 79 branches in the country.

The government announced yesterday that it was considering the possibility of creating "regional centers" for banking and postal services in the regions of the provinces where these services will soon disappear.

However, it is too little and too late for many people in the provincial areas that have been in the news for some time.

The Rotorua Post Office, Tutanekai St, closed in July and the building is a self-service Kiwibank facility.

Meanwhile, in Te Puke, a community group is trying to co-finance a postal service.

Rotorua Gray Power's president, Miriam Ruberl, said talking about hubs now that post offices were disappearing was done with a "pen stroke".

"It is not the act of God or any calamity that has produced it, it is the stroke of the pen that made this decision.

"Which could actually be dealt with another pen shot and delayed until the alternative is in place."

Ruberl said that Gray Power members were unhappy with the choice of access to traditional postal services.

She said that people's lives have long been focused on postal services and that many do not understand why this should change.

"There is no reason to ask the New Zealand public if he wants a post office or not, because, of course, he wants a post office."

She said the pressure to go digital was not an option for everyone and she was worried for those who did not have access to the internet.

She said that forcing people to work in a particular way was a fascist idea.

"We may not be discussing how businesses should behave, but why people are being told how to live their lives."

Meanwhile, the Te Puke community has been actively trying to save its post office for several weeks and is trying to create its own version of a "regional hub".

The Te Puke Center Working Group is organizing crowdfunding to purchase postal services.

The working group would manage the postal services as a social enterprise and pay the proceeds to a charity that would manage an information and visitor center.

The group's president, Karen Summerhays, said the group did not want to embark on the debt relationship and so asked the community to help. The group set up a PledgeMe page.

"It's a city that buys this post office and it's really very humiliating."

The city has raised more than $ 35,000 on the $ 50,000 goal.

Summerhays was amazed by the number of paper promises she had received.

She said that it was in itself a sign Postal services were a necessary part of the community.

"I think that shows that there are still many members of our community who are not yet online, and if they are online, they are just not confident in this space."

Upon learning the news of "regional clusters", Summerhays took the initiative to contact Finance Minister Grant Robertson, head of the New Zealand Post.

She added that the government should take up some of the ideas in the group's proposal and use the Te Puke center as a pilot program.

"The social enterprise aspect of our proposal plan is something that the government probably has not looked into yet.

"The reasons that it would work as a social enterprise are well founded, mainly because they are so neutral."

Upon receiving a call from a Tauranga woman who operated a business in Rotorua but was doing all her postal service at Te Puke, Summerhays realized the vital space that the postal services offered to the companies.

"She does it because [the post office] It's easier to get there than going to the malls and trying to find a park and lugging all of its postal materials through the mall.

"It's one of those stories that shows that it's not just Te Puke who uses the post office," Summerhayes said.

A Greerton business owner has already felt the consequences of the absence of a nearby post office.

Owner of Affordable Access Elevators Geoff Ellett was stunned by the disappearing postal services.

Now, the business owner has to go downtown to deposit the checks he was able to make at his local post office.

Ellett said that there would always be need for postal services.

"I just think it's shameful that the New Zealand public is now trapped by a government-owned service that is still very critical to the lives of many people."

He thought that the separation of Kiwibank and the New Zealand Post had resulted in the latter feeling that the maintenance of the services was not profitable.

Ellett said that he was stunned when he had learned that Greerton's postal services would disappear, knowing that the queue for the post office was often exhausted.

"If the New Zealand Post had kept a simple banking operation and remained a single entity, there would be no problem in providing full service throughout the country."