Pakistan Post Office lays off 15% of staff

The Pakistan state postal services has issued redundancy notices to 6,000 employees, the Postmaster General Ghulam Punjtan Rizvi said Monday, sparking the threat of a strike by the postal union.

Termination notices have been served on those employees who had completed 20 or 25 years of services, or to those who had been reprimanded for disciplinary violations several times during their tenure, Rizvi told AFP.

The layoffs would affect 15 percent of the 40,000-strong work force.

A spokesman for the National Organisation of Postal Employees (NOPE) said the union was considering whether to call a national strike over the matter.

“We have to decide about giving a call for a countrywide strike as a protest against the proposed retrenchment of 6000 employees,” Khalid Majid told AFP Sunday.

Majid said the NOPE central body was to meet in Lahore Monday to map out their next step, and threatened that postal workers would refuse to deliver the mail if lay-off notices were not withdrawn.

Rizvi warned that since mail delivery was an essential service, postal employees were barred from going on strike.

Majid said that a number of lower-ranking employees were being transferred to areas far away from their home towns, charging the moves were to “victimise” them.

The transfer prompted one postal employee to commit suicide, Majid said, holding the post office responsible for his death.