Editorials

EDITORIAL: Posta should adopt tech

employee

A Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) employee collecting letter. FILE PHOTO | NMG

That State-owned Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) has not paid salaries to its employees since March in the middle of an unprecedented economic crisis is disheartening.

Most workers are struggling to make ends meet and going for months without pay must be devastating to families whose breadwinners work for the State corporation.

Posta has also failed to remit pension savings to the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA), further highlighting the firm’s cash flow challenges.

It is necessary for the corporation to restructure and have a small team that it can pay while adopting technology to run most of its operations.

In the last 10 years, Internet service providers and the entry of giant telecoms Safaricom, have drastically cut reliance on Posta for the physical delivery of letters.

The parastatal’s fortunes have dwindled following an uptake of email, calls, SMS and social media which has resulted in a major decline in mail correspondence, especially among individuals.

Posta has given employees and other stakeholders a sense of false hope in the past that it would manage to reform and innovate back to profitability.