South African Post Office (Sapo) workers face an uncertain future after the company issued 4 700 retrenchment letters recently.
Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Mondli Gungubele announced in a parliamentary session in March that 235 post offices would close across the country, mostly in the Free State and North West as well as North Gauteng, Limpopo, and Mpumalanga.
Gungubele also confirmed that further retrenchments could be expected but at the time did not provide an official figure.
However, Business Day reported this week that Sapo’s Business Rescue Practitioners (BRPs) had started sending out 4 700 retrenchment letters to its workers, accounting for about 42% of the 11 083-strong workforce.
However, the Communications Workers Union (CWU) reported that the post office was retrenching 5 148 workers, although this number has reportedly dropped because of natural attrition and some staff choosing voluntary retrenchment packages.
Most of the money needed to pay retrenchment packages is expected to be sourced from the government’s R2.4-billion bailout, but rescue practitioner Anoosh Rooplal has said the conclusion of the retrenchment payments depends on it receiving the R3.8bn bailout the entity asked for to fund its turnaround strategy.
The funding was needed to digitise the post office to bring it up to speed with current technological developments in the postal environment. However, Treasury declined to provide this additional funding.
According Gungubele the public postal service received R10.3bn in bailouts between 2016 and 2024.
