Students suffer due to the PO strike

The nationwide strike of the South African Post Office (SAPO) continues to affect businesspeople,
students and other post office users.

The SA Post Office workers had been involved
in industrial strike on and off for the past few years, but this year’s strike dismally affected Limpopo
as well. Workers had voiced the need for the conversion of casual workers into permanent staff.
A student of the University of South Africa (Unisa), Ms Tshilidzi Bulannga, said that the strike had affected her studies badly. She said she had to resort to using e-mails to re-submit most of her assignments, which was quite daunting for her.

“I suffered the setback and I had to prepare some assignments from zero,” she said. “I couldn’t get some of the books which I had purchased prior the strike. Books just hung somewhere in the country and I had to buy new books, using other courier services.”

When the strike hit the country, most post offices kept their doors open and continued to accept
letters and outgoing goods from the public. The sad part about this reception of letters was that
letters and parcels piled up and filled up respective post offices nationwide without being dispatched to the next points.

Post offices in Limpopo started opening their doors for operation a fortnight ago. But post office users are sceptical that things are in order. “They are just accepting our letters and parcels,” said Ms Lucky Mulaudzi, who runs a small stationery shop in Thohoyandou. “The strike has had a bad impact on my business. I am unable to pay my rent and electricity bills now. And the landlord won’t take the strike story for an excuse not to pay the rent.”

On 13 October, the SAPO released a press statement announcing that it had put forward proposals to end the current strike. “Negotiations are currently taking place in the Leadership Forum, a body that was initiated by the Department of Telecommunication and Postal Services to facilitate the resolution of a number of issues confronting the SA Post Office,” said SAPO.

Even though the worker/employer problems have not been resolved yet, SAPO has urged sensible calm among its employees and all the affected parties until a final settlement is announced. “These negotiations are still on-going with the view to achieving consensus on a workable proposal,  specifically in consideration of the financial challenges that are currently experienced by the company and exacerbated by the inability to restore full operations,” SAPO said.

However, the post offices in Vhembe are open but users still find it hard accept that everything
is back to normal. “We continue to receive local mail and nothing else,” Mashudu Mulangaphuma
said. “I just believe that the battle goes on; we as clients suffer the most.”

Date:21 November 2014

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

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