Pakistan Post’s 625 properties occupied

Department is heading towards bankruptcy due to government negligence

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Post Office, once the unchallenged giant of the mail delivery service in the country, is marred by mismanagement, rampant corruption and a system that delivers mail at a snail’s pace even in today’s fast-paced world. On top of all we have a government that is totally indifferent to the country’s creaky entity.

The department has come under scathing criticism in parliament over its poor service delivery, allegations of gross mismanagement and corruption.

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Background discussions with the department’s current and former staff clearly state that the department’s internal structure needs to be overhauled, including the introduction of modern technology for courier services.

According to documents available with The Express Tribune, as many as 625 offices, residential buildings and vacant plots of the PPOD have been encroached upon or illegally occupied in different parts of the country during the last two years and the department can do little to fix anything.

The post office department was established by the British government in the 18th century for correspondence in and outside India (now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh).

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Pakistan Post can rightly be called one of the oldest government departments inherited by the nascent state in 1947. After Independence, it started work under the Department of Posts and Telegraph in the Ministry of Communications.

In 1962, it was separated from the Telegraph and Telephone Department and made an independent attached department for smooth and swift service delivery.

According to the documents, the department is heading towards bankruptcy due to negligence of the government on the one hand and its inability to compete with private postal and courier services on the other.

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The documents suggest that the PPOD has 4,172 buildings across the country of which 90 are administrative offices, 714 operational offices, 3,252 residential buildings and 49 plots. During the last two years, different mafias and encroachers have illegally occupied 625 such properties and the trend has seen a dramatic surge.

The occupations are in the zones of 10 the Postmaster Generals in major cities like Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Multan, Peshawar and Lahore and include the offices of director-general and general managers.

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Similarly, over 200 cases are being pursued at legal and law-enforcement levels for retrieval of such buildings and land of which 177 are in courts, 30 with the police and 31 with assistant commissioners, deputy commissioners and revenue officials.

The National Assembly was informed last year that over 16,000 people working for the Pakistan Post as extra-departmental staff (EDS) get monthly remuneration that ranges between Rs650 and Rs2,600.

 

Financial losses

 

In May, the Senate Standing Committee on Communications was taken aback by the “poor and out-dated” performance of the Pakistan Post along with Rs1.6 billion losses during the last five years.

PPOD’s Deputy Director-General Administration Rubina Tayyab informed the committee that the losses were caused due to corruption in the department.

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She stated that 736 cases of fraud and corruption had been registered in departments dealing with utility bills, distribution of the Benazir Income Support Programme and savings accounts.

She also informed the members of the committee that of the Rs624.46 million embezzled, the Pakistan Postal Services had recovered Rs142 million over the past five years.

The committee was told that the money had been recovered from 241 reported cases during this period.

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The members were told that in 2012, 43 cases were registered where Rs158 million were embezzled. Of this, Rs15.74 was recovered. In 2013, 52 cases were registered of Rs58.26 million embezzled. Of this Rs29.09 million was recovered.

In 2014, 36 cases were registered for embezzlement of Rs90.70 million, of which Rs12.2 million were recovered by the department. Subsequently, 47 cases were registered in 2015 for embezzlement of Rs94.1 million of which Rs28.02 million were recovered.

In 2016, 63 cases were reported in which Rs223.4 million were embezzled. The department recovered Rs 57.5 million.

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Rubina told The Express Tribune stated that such minor corruption was not a big deal. “We deal with over Rs4 billion cash dealings on a daily basis so if we include human error and embezzlement, the percentage is way low than the actual amount.”

She, however, confessed that the department was struggling as it catered to 85% of clients in rural areas because in urban areas people have private services to avail.

“The role of the department [has transformed] with the emergence of private courier services including logistics,” she said, adding they were going to launch their own company for courier services, in addition to introducing a computerised national payment system.

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Mobile money solutions, rebranding of the company and its image is the priority while handling over 13,000 post offices across the country, she concluded.

Commenting on the issue, a former director-general of the PPOD, who had served for 35 years in the postal services, stated that the degradation started during the previous government when political appointments were made and no additional funds were pumped into it to sustain its functions.

“It is due to mismanagement on the part of the government with no planning at all like we see in Pakistan Railways and PIA,” he said, adding, “Nobody does long-term planning.” He suggested that the government needed to invest in human resource and plug loopholes in the system to stop waste of resources.