NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 7– The Postal Corporation of Kenya is set to undergo a restructuring process, a move the government has said will help the troubled state-owned company bounce back to profitability.
ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru in his submissions before the Senate Standing Committee on IT said ministry officials had commenced talks with the National Treasury in a bid to formulate a modality to ensure affected employees will be compensated as required.
“ We are in the process of accelerating the restructuring process of the corporation so that we can be able to move it forward, which is a very delicate process and we cannot just start sending people home, we must have a plan for them and so we have been working very closely with the National Treasury so that we do this in a humane way,” said Mucheru.
His sentiments come a week after the National Treasury approved a Sh810 million bailout for the company to pay employee salaries dating back to March.
According to Mucheru, the government was unaware of some of the struggles the corporation was facing thus the late intervention in taking care of employees’ wages.
“Postal Corporation is an independent institution even though owned by the government and it funds itself from its own sources so when COVID-19 struck they did not inform us in time that all their revenues were affected when flights were halted,” CS Mucheru added.
Postmaster General Daniel Kagwe said the postal service has made losses worth Sh1.2billion in the current financial year, a situation that affected business operation leading to delayed payments.
“We lost Sh1.2billion in 2019/2020 majorly because of the last two quarters especially in February when planes were grounded about 70 percent of our business came to a halt because we use our cargos which we use passenger planes,” said Kagwe.
PCK will also adopt the revised ICT policy 2020 which recognizes that an effective postal and courier system is key to the development of e-commerce and the digital economy.
It will also be identified as the preferred courier operator and provider of cash transfer services for government institutions.
