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THE BELEAGUERED South African Post Office (Sapo) has fired close to 500 employees who have been involved in fraud, corruption and theft in the past three years.
Sapo CEO Nomkhitha Mona told members of the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on communications that they had to fire these employees because their actions affected the post office.
Mona said some of their employees have been arrested by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and charged for these crimes.
Sapo and Postbank were on Wednesday tabling their audited financial statements to the parliamentary committee.
Mona said Sapo last posted a profit in 2006 and has been struggling since then.
The post office is one of the state-owned entities that has relied on bailouts from National Treasury.
The Treasury has pumped in hundreds of billions of rand in bailouts for struggling state-owned entities in the last decade.
Mona noted that Sapo has been working closely with Postbank in the payment of social grants.
But in addition to the problems besetting Sapo, it has found that some of its own employees have been involved in corruption, theft and fraud.
“We have taken a number of actions in the past because you find that some of the wrongdoers are also Sapo employees. From 2021 we have dismissed 488 employees. Out of those 203 employees it was related to fraud and theft. In the current financial year under review, it is 188 people. Of those that we dismissed, SAPS has made 372 arrests and 62 of those are former Sapo employees. There has been activity around that we remove those that are detrimental to the business ... thieves and other people for wrongdoing,” said Mona.
She said they want to ensure that the law takes its course with regard to people who are involved in wrongdoing at Sapo.