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The Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services Dr Siyabonga Cwele welcomes the agreement reached today by the SA Post Office (SAPO) and its recognised unions. The agreement ends a strike which started earlier this month.

“It is instructive that the SAPO and its unions reached a settlement on the day the world celebrates the gift of life of our global icon Tata Nelson Mandela. One of the lessons we learnt from Madiba is the ability of reaching sustainable solutions in a non-violent way around a negotiating table,” said Minister Cwele.

He said the SAPO and its unions have a common interest in ensuring a sustainable future for the organisation in the face of increasing competition in its traditional markets. He encouraged all the parties to continue engaging each other to seek a common approach to ensuring a sustainable post office by focusing on opportunities brought about by e-commerce and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Minister Cwele urged the post office to focus on clearing the mail backlog and improving service delivery to its customers.

The agreement between the two parties include the following;

• Post Office employees across the board will receive a salary increase of 6.5%, backdated to 1 April 2018.
• Furthermore, the contracted working hours for permanent part time employees, have been moved from 21.5 hours a week to 27.5 hours a week.
• Five hundred (500) of these positions are earmarked to be phased in as permanent full-time employees in due course, following an appropriate process.

The agreement follows a meeting Minister Cwele held with the SAPO board, management and unions on Monday, 16 July 2018.

“It is clear that the parties were already close to reaching an agreement at the time we met. I am pleased that they were able to resolve the outstanding issues in such a short space of time.

“The post office remains an important organisation which enables citizens in rural areas to access government services. The latest example of this is the partnership it has with SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) to pay social grants,” said Minister Cwele.

Minister Cwele further called on citizens who have not yet migrated to the new Sassa/SAPO card to urgently do so.

Issued by Government Communications and Information Systems