Attorney-General Freundel Stuart made the point as he gave brief remarks at the service to mark Postal Week at the Abundant Life Assembly yesterday.

A wide cross-section of the postal service attended the service with Postmaster Joel Brathwaite and former Postmaster General Herbert Niles.

Stuart indicated that just 18 years after Emancipation, in 1852, the Barbados Postal Service was established and provided an integral service for Barbados businesses and much of the population during the 1950s, '60s and '70s who depended on remittances from relatives in Britain and the United States to better provide for their family.

He said in the face of advanced telephone technology, both fixed-lines and cellular, along with email and people opting to carry out themselves many functions previously done on the postal service, mail carriers were still very much needed by Barbadian society.

The Attorney-General mentioned that the high quality of service, reliability, honesty and consistency of the Barbados Postal Service saw many Barbadians still choosing the post office. He added that pensioners in Barbados still look forward to the postal officers' arrival in their neighbourhood.

In his sermon based on Proverb: 22:6, "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it", Pastor Michael Holford exhorted the congregation to elevate the joy of seeing to their children's spiritual growth to the same level as their academic and athletic growth.

The pastor asked the Attorney-General to convey his support of the uniform code and free bus rides for school children to Prime Minister David Thompson. But he cautioned that dress code and bus rides do not address the heart and root of the spirit of rebellion affecting our children and adults.

Holford said Barbadians, like the biblical Abraham, must command our children in the way of the Lord so that when the novelty of the free bus rides and the dress code wears off, the children would not revert to deviant behaviour. (KB)