US and Cuba to Have a Direct Mail Service

HAVANA TIMES — The United States and Cuba announced on Friday that “in the coming weeks” direct mail service between the two countries will be resumed, more than five decades after it was cut off, reported DPA news.

Washington and Havana reached an agreement for the launch of “a pilot program for transporting mail, which will begin in the coming weeks,” stated the Cuban Foreign Ministry. It is expected that the service “may be instituted permanently in the future,” it said.

A State Department spokesman told dpa in Washington that the agreement provides for the recovery of air postal transport “several times a week. The announcement of the agreement reached in Miami came just days before the first anniversary of the historic rapprochement announced by the governments of Washington and Havana in December 2014.

The actual date of the restoration of direct mail will be announced shortly.

“After more than five decades without having this important service, direct mail and parcel shipments between Cuba and the United States will be available to the citizens of both countries at a date to be announced when the technical, operational and safety details are finalized,” said the Cuban Foreign Ministry.

An estimated at about two million live in the United States, mostly in Florida.