The Post Office takes extreme measures to counter AK-47 thieves, reports Marion Edmunds
THE Post Office is to establish an internal investigations unit, staffed by former spies, to combat the rampant fraud and theft plaguing its operations.
The organisation said this week that the new unit – Security Investigation Services – would work undercover to expose dishonest workers and to prevent attacks by AK-47- wielding thieves.
Figures for the losses suffered by the country to postal fraud and theft are not available, but Witswatersrand Post Office – one of the largest in South Africa – said the situation in post offices was “like the Wild West.” In the last three months alone, thieves have attacked a post office every day in the Wits region.
The Post Office has appointed former South African Police Service brigadier Reggie Marimuthu as head of the new unit. He will establish the crime-fighting force with regional units and an intelligence link within the Post Office.
He plans to employ about 400 people, drawn from the ranks of ex-military and criminal intelligence, who would work undercover.
“The police do not have the manpower to deal with the problems of the Post Office,” he said. “We are employing people with intelligence backgrounds, ex-police, ex- military and ex-Umkhonto weSizwe.”
Marimuthu would not say what his department’s budget was, but this week was reviewing security equipment for the Post Office to buy.
Post and Telecommunications Minister Jay Naidoo told Parliament last week that the Post Office had suffered a R572-million loss this financial year, compared to a long-running plan where it was due to show a small profit.
The organisation had also requested a R213- million subsidy from the government. Naidoo said the Post Office would now be restructured.
The Post Office said it had lost nearly R7- million to fraud and robbery last year, R9,6-million in 1995 and R9,4-million in 1994.
These statistics exclude what is lost by individual South Africans through the violation of letters and parcels by dishonest post office workers, some of whom are petty criminals and others, part of organised syndicates.
Witwatersrand Post Office regional general manager, Manie MacDonald, said crime was the biggest issue facing the organisation. “The Post Office is the soft target.”
He said international mail was hit on by robbers, often while in transit.
“On Friday we received three bags of registered mail from overseas, all of which had been slit open with a knife before they got here.
“There were meant to be 42 registered items in the bags, and there were only six left. Now they could have contained really expensive things – diamonds, gold, foreign exchange . and because there is no international insurance, all the sender gets back is what he paid in postage,” he said.
MacDonald said dishonest workers targeted compact discs and credit cards. He said he had just installed security cameras worth R360 000 in the region’s main sorting office to reduce pilfering.
“A lot of the fraud is through big crime syndicates who make a fortune out of the Post Office,” he added.
“One of our workers was caught in the OK supermarket with 11 credit cards and was arrested and taken to court.”
The police had the docket and fifteen minutes before the case started the docket disappeared. The judge threw the case out of court.
MacDonald said that a South African who complained regularly about not getting his mail had just phoned him to tell him he was emigrating.
MacDonald said politicians should bear at least part of the blame for the performance. Former National Party ministers had undermined the Post Office’s ten-year profit plan by refusing just before the 1994 elections to raise the tariffs to meet target income.
The organisation said earlier this week that it had proposed to government that it be allowed to lift raise tariffs by up to 40% in a bid to bolster its revenues. Negotiations with government are under way and a formal announcement is likely next week.
MacDonald said the Post Office was also forced to service deep rural areas which were unprofitable and a drain on their finances.
“Our main profit centres are Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria. We spend a billion rands providing services – stamps, pensions and deliveries in deep rural areas which are just not profitable.”