Posta freeze payments to creditors
The Entities owed money by the Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) will have to wait longer for their money after the corporation directed managers to stop other payments so as to ring-fence revenues towards paying staff salaries.
In an internal memo seen by Business Hub Postmaster General, John Tonui, directed the General Manager Finance, regional managers, regional accountants and the headquarter cashier to cease payments with immediate effect.
“You are expected to stop payments with immediate effect and consolidate your generated revenues towards paying staff salaries for the month of April and May 2023. We shall progress with payments once all staff salaries are settled,” Tonui said in the memo.
He however said that only fuel, agency, money orders, and M-Pesa payments are exempted from the directive.
PCK has been struggling financially for quite a while now a situation that has seen its 2500 employees go without salaries for months.
This comes amid plans to restructure both PCK and the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), in a move expected to return the two State-owned agencies to profitability within the next three years.
According to the National Assembly’s Committee on Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) KBC and PCK have pending bills totaling Sh12 billion and Sh5.4 billion respectively.
Restructuring will involve bailing the two corporations out and clearing their debt. PCK has accumulated pending bills that are made up of outstanding financial obligations in critical expenditure areas manifested by delays in compensation to employees.
The PCK has also not remitted statutory deductions such as pensions, Sacco contributions and taxes, and outstanding bills owed to various suppliers among others.
According to Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communication and the Digital Economy Eliud Owalo, the government has began delivering medicine using postal services as part of helping the corporation to its feet.
The Sh295 million deal between Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (Kemsa) and PCK is expected to push revenues made by PCK from offering logistics services to government to Sh900 million from the Sh600 million in financial year 2022/2023.
Kenyans will be looking to see if Tonui, who took office of the loss-making corporation in February, will turn it around.
