Posta to put managers on contract in cost-cutting drive

Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) is seeking to review employment terms for its top managers as the cash-strapped state-owned firm strives to cut costs and improve efficiency.

Those to be affected include general managers for various services including mail, payments, courier, finance, supply chain corporate communication, government businesses and customer, human resource and administration.

Others are those in charge of ICT, operations, regional postmasters, business development and strategy and corporate Secretary.

Post Master General Dan Kagwe told Business Daily that they will be put under three-year renewable contracts, which will be based on performance, away from the current permanent and pensionable terms.

“We are going to move it to the board that we need to implement the government’s directive that everybody from manager all the way to the general managers to be on contracts. I am hoping we can effect it from the first of January,” Mr Kagwe said.

Mr Kagwe added that this will help improve staff performance.

The move comes after ICT principal secretary Esther Koimett said a Cabinet memorandum has been developed to restructure the loss-making parastatal and transform it as an emerging e-commerce business.

“We are undertaking reforms at PCK. The ministry will request government facilitation to upgrade infrastructure network, debt restructuring, staff rationalization and capital injection for PCK among others” she told the National Assembly’s departmental committee on Information, Communication and Technology last week.

The increased uptake of digital forms of communications such as email, SMS and social media apps has led to a decline in use of physical letters as a means of correspondence. Latest statistics show that in the three months to March 2020, the number of letters sent locally dropped by 19.3 percent to 8.5 million from 10.5 million in the quarter ended December 2019.