COMMUNICATION Workers Union (CWU) is set to meet with the South African Post office (Sapo) on Monday, 12 September, over unpaid medical aid contributions.
Union general-secretary Aubrey Tshabalala said they wanted to know what happened to their members’ money.
Post Office MEDiPOS medical scheme informed its members last month that their membership would be suspended due to unpaid contributions.
The scheme said it was owed more than R700 million in outstanding contributions by Sapo.
“We have people with chronic disease, who rely heavily on medical aid for medication. These people found that money had been deducted from their salaries to pay the medical aid. But for whatever reasons, the money was not channelled there,” he said, adding that it amounted to fraud.
“People were not informed money was deducted yet not taken where it was supposed to go. It’s one thing to talk about financial crisis, but it’s another to be dishonest because it means workers are underpaid wrongly,” he said.
Nearly 12 000 employees and their families would be affected by the decision.
ALSO READ | Man stabs lover before killing himself
Tshabalala blamed this on poor management by the Sapo board, and said the problems were self-inflicted.
He said he could not rule out the possibility that Sapo was being sabotaged so it can be sold to private companies.
He added that he believed some of the problems “were manufactured at the state level or government level”.
“Sapo delivers service to the poorest of the poor. It has blueprint across the country but at the same time, has been in a way stumbled so it cannot process service to our people,” said Tshabalala.
A statement from MEDiPOS read: “Unfortunately, Sapo has not been paying the full membership contributions to MEDiPOS, despite the court order that was issued last September.”
Democratic Alliance MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said she was shocked at the revelation that despite contributions being deducted from salaries, no payment had allegedly been made to the medical aid since 2020.
“A report presented to the communications portfolio committee laid out details of the 20/21 Post Office annual results. It outlined the performance – or lack thereof – of the office, which can today best be described as another failed state-owned enterprise,” she said.
