Does POS Malaysia think only of money?

PSM's Jeyakumar worries that rural folk will be deprived of postal services.

PETALING JAYA: PSM has urged POS Malaysia Bhd to disclose whether its retrenchment plan will lead to the closure of post offices in rural areas.

Speaking to FMT, PSM central committee member Michael Jeyakumar said it seemed likely that rural folk would be deprived of postal services if the company was thinking only of business.

His call for clarification came after The Malaysian Reserve reported that POS Malaysia was considering slashing down on its 24,000-strong workforce after realising that it was “a lot to manage”.

POS Malaysia CEO Mohd Shukrie Mohd Salleh was quoted as saying that the current manpower size was limiting the company’s ability to generate bigger profits despite its higher revenues.

POS Malaysia CEO Mohd Shukrie Mohd Salleh was quoted as saying that the current manpower size was limiting the company’s ability to generate bigger profits despite its higher revenues. He acknowledged that the company was discussing compensation terms with union leaders.

Jeyakumar said Shukrie appeared so concerned about making profits that he was forgetting POS Malaysia’s social function.

“Postal services will be making profits in urban areas because there’s good turnover, but to open and maintain offices in rural areas is not cost-effective,” he said. “If you’re looking at it from a purely business point of view, you can actually close those services because the amount of business you get there doesn’t cover the upkeep.”

He said essential services should not have been privatised in the first place, but if they were, it should have been with the understanding that the private entities were not there only to make money.

He said it would be worrying if POS Malaysia did indeed decide to close down its rural offices because rural people were more in need than urbanites of its services.

“For people in those areas, postal services are a very important form of communication,” he added.

POS Malaysia’s move to downsize came as a surprise because its revenue had been steadily increasing over the last few years, from RM1.3 billion in financial year 2013 to RM2.1 billion in the current financial year.

“A service that is making money should be subsidising rural areas,” Jeyakumar said. -FMT