PICAYUNE — A United States Postal Service spokesperson, Enola C. Rice, said on Monday that the postal service has no plans to close the McNeill and Carriere post offices. She made the statement in the wake of rumors that were wide-spread and began circulating in Pearl River County last week that the two post offices would be shuttered.

Rice said, however, that in some small, rural post offices personnel hours could be cut, but public hearings would be held before any decisions are made. “We will hold community meeting’s for each Post Office considered for modified retail hours, and expect to complete the Post Plan in 2014. Lobby hours, PO boxes and ZIP Codes will not change,” Rice added. She said no hearings so far have been held in Mississippi.

Said Rice, “We do not have any plans to close any post offices in the U.S., or in Pearl River County. We’re going to keep all post offices open.”

Rumors were rampant in Pearl River County last week that postal officials were planning to close the post offices at McNeill and Carriere. There are three that are considered small rural post offices in Pearl River County: Besides McNeill and Carriere, Nicholson community, south of Picayune, also has a post office on Jackson Landing Road, just across the railroad tracks on the right.

The McNeill and Carriere post offices are located on U.S. 11 North in those communities, north of Picayune.

The rumors also said daily hours of operation would be cut in McNeill and Nicholson. Rice said curtailment of hours in some post offices were being studied, but public hearings would be held in communities where such cuts are proposed.

Post Office officials earlier this year announced in Washington, D.C., that they planned to close 3,600 small rural post offices, and that announcement was immediately met with a backlash from Çongressmen and local officials who maintain they depend on the local post offices.

Postal officials came back in May and said they would not close the offices but would cut back personnel operating hours.

A postal service lobbying group, which operates a website, “savethepostoffice.com,” charged that officials who run the Postal Service  were still planning to close some offices, and had just re-labelled the process as “consolidation, relocation and suspension.”

However, Rice’s comment disputed that. She said the postal service has no “plans to close any post office in the U.S. . . .”

Postal officials told Congress that instead of closing the 3,600 offices, they would cut personnel hours at some 13,000 locations. There was no indication whether or not the cutbacks were temporary or permanent.

Postal officials cited continued revenue problems in a slack economy as the cause for the originally proposed closures and cutbacks, and said they would try to increase revenue from “junk mail” deliveries in order to help allay revenue decreases, news dispatches said. The postal service, contrary to popular belief, receives no government tax monies or subsidies any longer.

However, postal service critics charged the post office is overlooking the marketing potential contained in the thousands of brick-and-mortar locations throughout the nation. Critics say these facilities could be expanded if the postal service were capable of coming up with some bright new ideas on how to effectively use these smaller facilities to market post office services.

Private competitors, like UPS and FedEx, have drained off billions of dollars in business from the  postal service, which has been slow to change to market conditions.

But postal service officials announced in May moves it said would prevent the closure of thousands of local, rural post offices in order to close a budget gap.

Said Post Master General and CEO Patrick R. Donahoe, in making the announcement: “We’ve listened to our customers in rural America, and we hear them loud and clear: they want to keep their Post Office open.”

Donahoe then described what is called The Post Plan that would cut employee hours, but the retail lobby and access to boxes would still be available at the rural post offices.

He said that the new strategy will be implemented over a two-year period and would not be completed until September, 2014.

He said it would save yearly the postal service a half-billion dollars.