EDITORIAL: Post Office scaling a mountain but not at the summit just yet
CEO Mark Barnes is slowly turning around the state utility, but while the mail backlog is being tackled delivery remains a problem
There are not many people left in SA who willingly step up for public service. This is especially so when those people have skills and far more lucrative opportunities in private business. Mark Barnes, CEO of the Post Office, is one such person. Barnes has stepped out of his role as a private equity investor to run the Post Office for five years at the behest of Cyril Ramaphosa. He is halfway through that mission and he has given the Post Office what few imagined possible: a business case for the future. By persuading the government to allow the Post Office to distribute social grants he has put the organisation onto a modernisation track. There will be money available for infrastructure investment and the Post Office has been able to start putting in better electronic systems. It is due to Barnes’s vision that the Treasury granted it R2.9bn in the October medium-term budget. Barnes’s big idea when he took on the job was to convert the Post Bank into a fully fledged lender able to b...
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