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A branch of the SA Post Office Office.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) says it will seek urgent engagements with the Ministers of Employment and Communications as well as with Treasury, to find solutions for the ongoing crisis, threatening the collapse of the South African Post Office (SAPO) and jobs of thousands of its employees.
According to COSATU’s Parliamentary Coordinator Matthew Parks, if the Post Office is allowed to collapse — and if reports that government funds earmarked to assist its turnaround have not been paid are true — it will undermine efforts to amend the SAPO and Postbank Acts.
Parks says the amendments were to enable SAPO to embark on a new, sustainable business model and it’s urgent for government to act.
“We are extremely worried about reports that the R3,8 billion committed by National Treasury has still not been received by SAPO and that only three out of six agreed to trenches of payments from the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s Temporary Employee Relief Scheme (UIF’s TERS) have been paid. These not only make the long-promised turnaround of the SAPO impossible but also risk its remaining employees’ jobs.”
“It is very concerning that SAPO’s Business Rescue Practitioner (BRP) is now said to be considering approaching the courts to liquidate SAPO. If true, this would be an absolute calamity for SAPO’s workers and their families, the customers and communities who depend upon its services,” explains Parks.
