I seem some elements in the media, presumably bored of waiting for a disabled athlete to turn up at a Police Station, are now mentioning the ongoing postal strike. With what I have discovered today, I am amazed that no true investigative journalist in SA has looked at this. Perhaps we just don't have any proper journalists any more?
Bored and fed up of having no post I called the Post Office. In an interesting move, different from, say, City Power, the people at the Post Office are actually answering their phones. I had a lovely chat with a most delightful lady there, a lady who had got nothing but abuse from other callers.
The full extent of this postal strike, and why it goes on, is quite frankly ridiculous. Here's what no one else is bothering to report right now.
A scam was run from within the Post Office sorting depots. A group, presumably employees of the Post Office, approached staff about a lawsuit against the Post Office relating to money that the Post Office owed staff from several years ago. To get in on this lawsuit the cost was a substantial amount of your salary.
The reward to those duped was said to be a guaranteed payout of R100,000,000.00 for each participant. Yes, you read that right - One Hundred Million Rands. A figure so preposterous that you would not think anyone stupid enough to fall for it.
Stupidity, alas, goes hand in hand with greed, and for all of us without post for the last two weeks we know just how many stupid and greedy people work at the Post Office sorting offices.
With this scam bust and, going on an advert in the papers, the SAPS "investigating", why do we still have a strike? Mostly because the top brass of the Post Office appears to have no spine. It's an illegal strike, and those striking are breaking the law in regards of delaying post being delivered.
The Post Office could, then, fire the lot and have them arrested. A partial reason for the strike going on, however, is that those duped by this scam still believe the Post Office should pay them R100,000,000.00 each anyway, since they contributed to the costs of the case. On one level you have to admire their audacity, but for the most part you can only laugh in the face of such stupidity and greed.
As of today, 27 February 2013, there are over 3,000,000 (three million) unsorted and thus undelivered mail items at Witspos. There are a fair few thousand more items sat in post boxes around Gauteng uncollected. The mind boggles as to how they are going to deal with this backlog.
Whereas one is actually inclined to feel some sympathy towards the Post Office in the face of such mass stupidity from their employees, one has to ask just how is it that so many easily conned people were employed. Perhaps the background and aptitude tests the Post Office conducts on potential employees needs a bit of work.
One also has to wonder about the alarming lack of any sort of forensics division in the Post Office that could have detected this kind of fraud going on. We all know full well about the high levels of stolen or "missing" mail items, but you would have thought that they would at least have tried to protect their own staff?
And surely at least one employee was not so stupid as to have fallen for this obvious scam and tried to raise the alarm with someone senior?
I think in their next advert of apology the SA Post Office should put the full details of what has been going on, showing just how stupid their staff have been and continue to be. Why not humiliate them?
It would certainly garner a level of understanding for the Post Office with their current problem and hopefully shame those involved into either going back to work or, better still, quitting and allowing those who want to work take their position.
I get the feeling this strike and the consequences of it shall run for a fair amount of time yet; hopefully it will soon start to get a bit more exposure in the media.
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