Office closures: like a letter to the Post Office? – rts.ch

It has been 14 years since the Montricher (VD) post office closed. In this village of a thousand inhabitants, nestled at the foot of the Jura, there remain vestiges of the recent past: bars on the windows, boxes and post office boxes, in a building that has become a psychological support establishment in schools.

“People were unhappy,” says Didier Amez-Droz, the town’s trustee. “It’s like everything else: if we close a restaurant, the grocery store, the school or a post office, the village is dead.” However, the trustee is aware of a development in society which he considers inevitable: “Who still pays through La Poste? You should do an investigation, but not many people”.

Partner businesses to ensure continuity

In Montricher, postal services have not completely disappeared. It is the village grocery store which has taken over most of the service, in partnership with the yellow giant. The store can offer a wide range of La Poste’s main activities.

And the benefits exist for commerce. “People are likely to discover things that interest them, which they perhaps would not have done if they had not come for the post,” says Celia Reber, the owner. As for the contract signed with La Poste, the financial interest is rather limited, according to her: “It’s butter in spinach, but that’s not what allows us to cook it.”

The advantages also come with certain constraints: employees must be trained to be able to deliver the postal service, and sometimes the demands exceed their skills, explains Celia Reber.

For the village, there is also a benefit. “For us, it’s really a quality to have the post office open on Saturday or Sunday,” says a customer of the store. “But at the same time, is it really up to these people to take on the work of La Poste? That’s the real question for me.”

Cities are not spared

Population density does not always slow down La Poste in its closure decisions. In Lausanne, the Bourdonnette district was the scene of a bitter struggle by residents to try to save their post office.

“We went to Bern, we held demonstrations, we did lots of things and it worked,” says Monique Gachet, 81, a resident of the neighborhood for 30 years. Under the leadership of a group of residents, the La Poste subsidiary was thus maintained for an additional seventeen years, until 2021. “They did not dare to attack La Bourdonnette too much. We are outside the town There are 2,000 people here, so we can’t close a post office like that,” the octogenarian boasts.

The Bourdonnette post office will eventually be transformed, and its services taken over by a grocery store. To the great displeasure of Monique: “We tried to maintain a public service, not a private service. The manager cannot respond to our requests. They are taking away a post from us, but they do not want to give us anything valuable .”

Ariane Hasler, Cédric Guigon