Post Office hasn’t delivered justice
I BECAME a sub-postmistress in 1995 and all was well at first: I had a very good remuneration, a small profit from the shop and we paid off the business mortgage in two years. Roll on ten years and after the new Horizon computer system for the postal service had been installed, £1,000 went missing. Then there was an issue with the Christmas stamps and I had to pay back the lost money. Ringing the helpline never resulted in any help. Then came the big one: Horizon flagged up that £24,000 was missing. I rang the helpline and the auditors came the next day. They shut the post office and I was suspended. Despite going to appeal, my contract was terminated. I got a letter to say there would be no proceedings against me, but I would not be reinstated. I lost everything, my job and savings, which has left me mentally scarred. I joined the group action against the Post Office, which we won. But the compensation had to pay for the legal fees and what was left didn’t amount to much for the 555 of us. We are now waiting for the Parliamentary Ombudsman to give us some answers and we then need a judicial inquiry to get our full compensation and for heads to roll. There have been suicides and deaths and the 45 sub-postmasters and mistresses who were jailed need justice.
ISABELLA WALL, Barrow, Cumbria. I AM disgusted at the way Post Office managers have ruined the lives of so many upstanding people. How do these jobsworths get into positions of power when they’ve neither the wit nor the intelligence to run a whelk stall? It should have been obvious when dozens of post offices suddenly had accounting errors at the same time that something was seriously amiss.
Why would honest people, some of whom had run their businesses for decades, fiddle their accounts when discovery would be inevitable? Senior managers couldn’t admit a computer error so they made scapegoats of innocent, hard-working people. Every person involved in this fiasco should be named, shamed, lose their job and be made to pay compensation. There should be a price to pay for ruining lives.
A. EDWARDS, Bridgwater, Somerset. THE Post Office boss has said ‘sorry’ over the false accounting scandal, but words are cheap. This has been a terrible blight on the lives of innocent people, some of whom lost their homes and went to jail. The senior managers responsible should never again be allowed to hold a high-powered government job.
DOREEN STEINBERG, Luton, Beds. I SPENT 40 years in IT and if I learned one thing it was that if the computer says you have a problem, it’s usually an issue with the system. How senior executives of the Post Office could believe that dozens of sub-postmasters and mistresses could all decide to defraud at the same time beggars belief. Thank you to the Daily Mail for campaigning for proper justice for these wronged employees.