SAPO not paying in workers’ pension and medical aid benefits – CWU

Angry SA Post Office (SAPO) workers are planning to down tools Wednesday, accusing the parastatal of not paying in workers’ pension and medical aid contributions to the relevant bodies even though the said deductions reflected on employee payslips.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) issued the industrial action notice to SAPO Friday and said their strike would commence on 14 October.

CWU general secretary Aubrey Tshabalala alleged that SAPO “violated several obligations” towards its workers as stated in their employment contracts,Fin24 reported.

These include the apparent non-payment of R213.3 million worth of medical aid contributions which have not been paid since April; retirement contributions which have not been handed over to administrators; and a failure to implement a 6.5% salary increase which the union said the parties had agreed on, and which was supposed to come into effect in April.

Where are the funds?

“We note that there are new people that just came in as acting now and have found the Post Office in this crisis it is at. But we are saying that heads must roll because workers’ payslips show that all the deductions were made. We are saying there is a misappropriation of funds.”

SAPO had not responded to questions regarding the situation, said Fin24.

Tshabalala said workers also wanted SAPO management to account for the R2.9 billion that National Treasury had allocated in the 2018 medium term budget.

SAPO received that allocation in January 2019 and said at the time that it would be used to partly to partly settle long-term loans, pay critical suppliers and fund future capital expenditure, said Tshabalala.

But last month, the Treasury said SAPO was back to ask for more financial support.

Missing Medipos money

On Friday, MEDiPOS Medical Scheme, which provides medical aid to SAPO employees, wrote to the state-owned entity (SOE) and warned that it would stop providing cover if arrear medical aid contributions were not paid by 31 December.

The letter reportedly stated that R213.3 million in contributions were outstanding from April 2020 to 30 September 2020.

MEDiPOS principal officer Thabisiwe Mlotshwa also wrote that the scheme continued to pay SAPO staff’s medical claims during that period, but it could not continue doing so indefinitely and that its failure to collect premiums timeously was creating trouble for MEDiPOS with the regulator, the Council for Medical Schemes.

“While, the scheme has made several attempts to engage with SAPO on this matter, and will continue to do so, as matters currently stand, there is no firm undertaking on the part of SAPO to make arrangements to pay the arrear contributions, as well as any contributions going forward.”

Thabisiwe Mlotshwa – MEDiPOS principal officer

SAPO going the SAA route?

Tshabalala said the union also wanted to address the “long-standing mismanagement” of SAPO with the planned industrial action.

He said workers proposed the modernising of SAPO more than a decade ago but the lack of political will debilitated the company to a point that it was at risk of a “collapse like SAA.”

“What [Danish courier company] DSV is doing today by putting machines at all garage forecourts, those are the things we proposed way back in 2007. Noting that the Post Office has footprint all around the country and all these other post and courier services don’t, it shows that there is a concerted effort to destroy the SOE deliberately.”

The CWU said its next plan of action was to march to government departments, including the National Treasury, which uses private sector players for courier needs.

He said the government also needed to address the fact that SAPO’s prices were regulated while competing in an open market with private players who can move goods much faster because they charge more.

SA’S STUMBLING SOES

In the past few years, South Africa’s SOEs have become synonymous with the corrupt phenomenon of ‘state capture.’

Their administrative and financial troubles are symptomatic of the endemic corruption that has taken hold in the public sector, with actors in the private sector willing participants.

Just last week, the Democratic Alliance (DA) claimed that Communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams flouted procurement processes at the South Africa Post Office in July by introducing a businessman and chairperson of private equity firm, Convergence Partners, Andile Ngcaba, to SAPO’s executives in an alleged bid to partner on a highly lucrative R2.1 billion e-commerce platform.

Furthermore, the DA said, in August 2020, Ndabeni-Abrahams was accused of putting pressure on SAPO and the Postbank to award a Covid-19 relief grant contract to her husband.

Mr Abrahams is alleged to have played a vital behind-the-scenes role between Blue Label Telecoms, the SA Postbank and a former SA Post Office executive to benefit financially from the distribution of the R350 Covid-19 relief grant.

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State-owned enterprises (SOEs) have also been a long-term drain on the finances of South Africa’s economy, requiring bailouts at a time of weak economic growth which have helped to tip its sovereign credit rating into “junk” status.

South Africa’s National Treasury said last month that the SA Post Office (SAPO), public broadcaster SABC and the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) were seeking a combined R10-billion in bailouts.

SAPO had requested R4.9 billion in support, SABC was seeking R1.5 billion and ACSA had applied for an equity injection of R3.5 billion because of the impact of Covid-19, according to the presentation by National Treasury officials.

South African Airways (SAA) meanwhile, is under a form of bankruptcy protection and embattled power utility Eskom is mired in corruption scandals with a R480 billion debt tag on it’s neck.