POST OFFICE
Post Office still buried under a mountain of mail
CEO Mark Barnes has missed his deadline to clear strike backlog by end of September
The Post Office remains snowed under by a backlog of mail accumulated in July’s strike, with 16-million items on the floor at depots around the country. CEO Mark Barnes promised in August that he would clear the backlog by the end of September after a two-week strike in July led to a 38-million backlog of letters and parcels. But that deadline has now been missed and the public remains frustrated, prompting a recent letter writer to Business Day to remark that to call it snail mail “would be an injustice to snails”. The writer had recently received an airmail letter from Dublin postmarked April 18. Barnes said on Thursday that the backlog had been cut down to 16-million in major sorting centres. “Should the rate of clearance continue, we expect all domestic mail items to be up to date by end of October at the mail sorting centres.” For the past two years the Post Office has been battling to keep basic equipment such as vehicles, forklifts, bags and pallets on the ground as creditors...
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