SA Post Office unlikely to accept help
BUSINESS DAY (SOUTH AFRICA) 17th September 2001
SA POST OFFICE UNLIKELY TO ACCEPT HELP
By Ron Chalmers
A HOST of foreign postal administrations, including those in France, Canada and the Netherlands, have come forward to offer their expertise and other assistance to the SA Post Office.
This comes in the wake of the termination of the management contract forged in 1999 between New Zealand’s Transend Worldwide and the SA Post Office. The contract was cancelled earlier this year after the Post Office failed to break even this year, as guaranteed by the New Zealanders.
Post Office CEO Maanda Manyatshe and his management team face the task of pulling back from a loss of about R850m for the year to end March while striving to meet a mandate of giving all citizens access to postal services.
Post Office spokesman Bernard Magabe said it was unlikely to forge another full management contract with a foreign postal organisation. There are good skills locally and we have developed a solid SA team at the Post Office which is highly capable of implementing the necessary strategies, he said.
But Magabe said the Post Office may consider using foreign skills for highly specialised projects in the future, such as the automation of systems or specific commercial business ventures.
Manyatshe recently returned from a trip to Canada where he met representatives from Canada Post. The Canadian postal administration was shortlisted in 1999 with Transend to become the Post Office’s management partner. It has extensive expertise in automation and developing electronic mail centres.
Canada Post is understood to have expressed reservations in its formal bid offer that the Post Office could achieve financial break-even in three years. It believed the ailing entity would take longer to turn around, particularly if government wanted to achieve its universal service obligations of investing in millions of new postal addresses.
The Post Office could consider bringing Canada Post on board for specific projects, but any such proposals first had to vetted by the Post Office board and government.
Magabe said Manyatshe would be visiting other postal administrations around the world, including in France and the Netherlands, so that the local entity could benchmark itself against international best practice.
These administrations have been queuing up to offer us assistance after it became known that the contract with the New Zealanders (had been cancelled), he said.
France’s La Poste also bid for the management contract with the Post Office but it did not make it into the last round, which shortlisted the Canadians and New Zealanders. Germany’s Deutsche Post put together a local and international consortium to bid for the Post Office. Local consortium partners include DHL, Dimension Data, Gemini Consulting and Paragon-Afric Mail. Neopostel, the Dutch postal entity’s consulting arm, was reportedly interested, but did not bid for the contract. Copyright 2001 Times Media Ltd.. Source: World Reporter (Trade Mark) – FT McCarthy.
