If you haven’t noticed anything yet between all the strikes and go-slows, expect your regular mail to be arriving even later in the future. The South African Post Office announced in a media statement that it will be letting go of more than 5 000 workers as part of its turn-around strategy.

“The SA Post Office will shed 5065 positions as part of the turnaround plan. But the (Post Office) has plans to mitigate the loss of jobs by creating entrepreneurial opportunities in retail agencies, the delivery of goods, and the provision of services. Job losses will also be mitigated by creating new opportunities in the inspection and enforcement of regulations, mailroom management and coordination,” the Post Office said in a press release.

The job shedding is part of the entity’s SA Post Office Corporate Strategic Plan 2015/2016 – 2017/2018, with the goal to turn it into “a customer-centric company that is competitive and engages in commercially-viable business activities which foster sustainable growth.”

The SA Post Office’s administrator, Dr Simo Lushaba, also acknowledged that the failing state-run operation needs a bit of a kick-start.

“We had to dig deep into the business for the plans we have devised to address the SA Post Office’s business and other operating challenges in totality. Some of the challenges we uncovered relate to a business supported by an inflexible operating model and sky top fixed costs.”

He also added that the Post Office suffered from managerial problems, which will hopefully be corrected with its new plan.

“Leadership constraints and the entity’s inadequate execution capability reflect the SA Post Office’s seeming inability to match its obviously declining mail revenues with revenue growth in its other business segments, such as its retail arm.”

The improvement plan will be aiming for R7.4 billion revenue improvement over 3 years.

“It is a strategic intent of the plan to position the SA Post Office as a key service provider of government services to citizens of South Africa, and grow government business up from the current 33% of total revenue to around 50 to 55%,” he said.

[Image – CC by 2.0/uditha wickramanayaka