Post Office promises to deliver Christmas cards on time
CHRISTMAS cards will be delivered, and will be delivered on time, Post Office acting chief executive Mlu Mathonsi promised yesterday.
“The plans we are putting in place are aimed to ensure Christmas cards are delivered on time,” he told the parliamentary telecommunications and postal services committee during a briefing on the Post Office turn-around.
Last year, the Post Office went through a bruising fourmonth strike over a labour dispute, which paralysed mail delivery and other operations, with the backlog of mail deliveries extending well into 2015.
In mid-August, the Post Office said: “The SA Post Office is pleased to inform its customers its mail conveyance delays have been resolved. Full conveyancing capacity will be restored as of August 15, 2015.”
Officials acknowledged the reputational damage, but said changes in attitude, cost cutting and rationalisation were paying off.
“We are off the mark,” Mathonsi told MPs.
Losses of R102 million are expected in the current 2015/16 financial year, with profits only from 2017. While currently still in the red, the situation is an improvement compared to the net losses of almost R360m in the 2013/14 financial year, and R179m in 2012/13.
Internally, the Post Office is rationalising delivery routes, looking at managing its own fleet of vehicles rather than renting them, rationalising its outlets as it is moving to kiosks and mobile structures, and ensuring the R55m it received to assist 600 struggling post offices is well spent.
Efforts are also under way to repay the R952m the Post Office owes to suppliers and creditors. Small, medium and micro enterprises are being prioritised in this, the MPs heard, after being told the debt had been reduced by R200m.
MPs were told a joint Post Office and National Treasury team is monitoring adherence to the terms and conditions of the more than R1 billion the Post Office received as guarantees from government.
But the Post Office is also getting a little help: at least some of its universal service obligations, like the annual targets of extending addresses to every South African, are not being raised.
In addition, the Post Office is looking for an injection of R3.4 billion over the next three years so it can invest in poten- tial money spinners and increase its client base because of improved services like tracking and tracing and new mailing business in the online world – for which, however, an investment of just over R500m in information and communication technology would be needed.
Funding was also needed for the rightsizing of the workforce, which, although part of the turnaround strategy, has not yet started. Currently, the number of workers – salaries are the biggest cost, followed by transport – is being lowered due to retirement and natural attrition.
Following the 2014 strike, the Post Office board resigned in November and Simosizwe Lushaba was appointed administrator, and he became chairman of the board when it was appointed in August 2015.
However, several key management posts remain unfilled, leaving, for example, Mathonsi doubling up as acting chief executive, while continuing as chief operations officer.
Vacant top jobs are expected to be filled soon as disciplinary proceedings against incum- bents are at a stage of settlement talks.
MPs were told there would be no golden handshakes, only settlements in keeping with legislative stipulations.
According to a parliamentary reply earlier this year, various top officials received about R5m in payouts in arbitration settlements over the past four years.
Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele said it wasn’t a Post Office practice to pay out the remaining value of a contract, adding “the executives were only paid the arbitration awards agreed to between the employees, their legal representatives and the company”.