More mail theft
Postal crime rose by a staggering 25% in the past financial year, with the number of incidents reported rising to 1699 from 1354, the South African Post Office said yesterday.
Internet mail order company Amazon.com recently said it would no longer send goods to customers through SA’s postal service because of theft.
The Post Office’s report for the year to end-March, tabled in Parliament yesterday, said most of the crime related to domestic mail but there was a significant 129% increase in international mail crime. The UK and US routes were the main targets.
“Crime and related activities remain the major single challenge of Sapo that affects service delivery,” the report said.
The Post Office said it would invest substantial sums this year to improve security systems, and R60m had been earmarked over the next three years to secure consumer service outlets.
The largest loss (R12,3m) was due to financial misconduct such as fraud, cash shortages, theft and service irregularities. There were 2362 incidents of financial misconduct, compared to 2354 the year before.
During the year, 220 employees were dismissed after disciplinary inquiries, 16 of whom had been arrested.
“Most of the financial success was realised in Postbank with a 33% reduction to R4m after several interventions were implemented to prevent fraud.”
Overall, the number of reported criminal incidents — as opposed to crimes blamed on postal workers — rose by 6% from 4045 to 4395. The report noted that violent crimes continued to be a major concern.
“The consumer services business unit continues to be a target of armed robbery”, it said.
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