EFF rejects SAPO decision to retrench 6000 workers

13 February 2023

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) rejects the decision to retrench 6000 workers by the South African Post Office (SAPO) as callous and as insensitive to the prevailing unemployment crisis confronting South Africa.

The South African Post Office has long been confronted by financial challenges due to its failure to modemise and compete with private sector courier services, and emerging technologies within the communications space. The Post Office's inability to to live up to the technological advances in communications, Is at the centre of its failure to generate revenue.

Retrenchments therefore are not a solution to stabilising the finances of the entity and ultimately, it will collapse due to the misguided view that the retrenchment of workers is strategy to resolve financial woes. It is a strategy that seems to be plaguing the creatively stagnant Communications Sector in South Africa, as it has been used by the South African Broadcasting Co-Operation (SABC) in the recent past.

The EFF is opposed to a jobs bloodbath as a solution to rescuing State-Owned Entities. If there is any interest in resolving the financial challenges confronting SAPO, then there needs to be a comprehensive strategy to modernise and compete with emerging entities in the courier and postal services industry.

Retrenchments are a confession of lack of ability and direction within SAPO and the Communications and Digital Technologies Department, and reveal a state that is not in touch with global trends which have seen Post Offices being central in major social and political innovations such as elections.

It is instances such as this that give rise to the genuine call by the EFF for a National Shutdown on the 20th of March 2023. The Cyril Ramaphosa government is determined to destroy the lives of our people and we must as a nation stand up.

It is not only the lives of the 6000 people whose jobs will be lost that will be affected, but all of the lives of their dependents who will no longer have means to sustain themselves.

The EFF calls on all of those 6000 people whose jobs are under threat at the South African Post Office, including their dependents, to join the National Shutdown in defence of their jobs.

There is no over the table negotiation which will rescue your jobs, and it is only on the picket lines that your livelihoods and that of your children will be secured!

Issued by Sinawo Thambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 13 February 2023