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In the spring of 2016, the Lithuanian Post urged residents to purchase individual mailboxes as soon as possible. The requirement is explained by the fact that the box blocks built several decades ago are out of date, which no longer guarantees the security of the correspondence. People quickly hooked new mailboxes to patio doors or house walls, but rusted metal debris still haunts the streets like ghosts.
Due to such relics of his time, the City Municipality and the Lithuanian Post Office even needed the intervention of the court.
Correspondence led to court
According to Tomás Jukna, director of the municipal administration, the state company was contacted for the removal of the tin garbage, but the latter claimed to be responsible only for the delivery of correspondence to these mailboxes.
“We asked Lietuvos paštas to fix that abandoned property, but the company replied that these boxes did not exist in their records, it was only responsible for sending them the correspondence. There was a lot of correspondence in the mail. As a consensus was not reached, there was still a long way to go before the courts, ”says the director.
At the beginning of last year, the municipality of Panevėžys started counting blocks of used mailboxes. There are 85 of them in the city.
According to T. Jukna, the municipality asked the court to find out who owns the boxes and who has the right to remove them.
“It is not owned by the Municipality and we cannot arbitrarily destroy it,” said the director.
Half still in use
During the litigation it was revealed that there are not several dozen, but even 260 such antiques, still living on the streets of Panevėžys. Although residents were threatened that by the end of May 2016, those who were not equipped with individual mailboxes would no longer receive correspondence, they would have to go to the post office to pick them up, it turns out that even half of the blocked mailboxes in Panevėžys still are used.
After a strange and short marathon between the two state institutions, a compromise was finally reached in court: the municipality agreed to remove the mailboxes and Lietuvos Paštas to pay for the work.
The court approved the peace treaty on Wednesday.
“The post office will provide a list of the mailboxes that are still in use, information brochures will be placed in them so that they will not be left for three months. That should be enough time for residents to buy a new box, “said T. Jukna.
It is planned to dismantle all the old Panevėžys mailbox blocks within six months.
“For several years now, the law has changed and mail is no longer carried in those mailboxes, but those remaining mailbox blocks don’t make the city beautiful. We get a lot of them and complaints, residents are outraged by such messy boxes left at their will. Although this may seem like a trifle, we can see how much it costs to fix it procedurally, ”says T. Jukna.
Responsible residents
According to Ugnė Bartašiūtė, Head of the Communication Department of the Lithuanian Post, the mailbox blocks were installed centrally around 30 years ago, some of them perhaps even earlier. He claims that the Lithuanian Post was never responsible for them.
“These mailboxes were maintained at the expense of the residents: they paid for their maintenance, repairs, etc.” Under the current Postal Law, the resident himself also takes care of the mailbox. In order to end the dispute peacefully and quickly, a mutually agreed peace treaty was adopted, ”U. Bartašiūtė commented on Sekundei.
How many mailboxes of this type are there still in other municipalities? Lietuvos paštas cannot answer. However, according to U. Bartašiūtė, the problem of generally untidy mailboxes is very relevant: around 40 percent. all the boxes are dirty.
This problem is more relevant in rural areas, but a series of messy boxes can also be seen in cities.
“We consider a messy mailbox when it is unlocked, broken and leaking. It is also not uncommon for a box to be behind a fence, hidden in bushes or guarded by a dog who is not very friendly. In such cases, we cannot leave letters or correspondence in the mailbox, so everything travels to the post office. The process could be much simpler if the mailbox were tidy: a person would not have to waste time going to the post office, and the work of a postman would be faster, ”said the postal representative.
The Lithuanian Postal Law stipulates what a neat mailbox should look like and that the resident is responsible for it.
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