Frustrated former workers of the South African Post Office marched to the Union Buildings on Tuesday, demanding their full pension payouts and an urgent investigation into missing salary deductions.
The marchers, who lost their jobs during the large mass retrenchments in 2024, said that former staff members are now facing the loss of up to 88% of their retirement savings.
Between May 2020 and July 2023, the Post Office deducted pension money directly from workers’ salaries every month, but the money was never paid over to the retirement fund.
Under the business rescue plan used to save the company from closing down, workers were told they would receive only a small part of what was owed to them.
Jacquelina Maja, one of the retrenched employees at the march, explained the deep stress the situation has caused.
“The Post Office was deducting our pension fund from our salaries, but was not taking into account the relevant things that my pension fund was doing,” Maja said. “Now they tell us we are only getting cents on the rand. We want our money back because our families are suffering.”
Other workers spoke out against past government explanations, saying their hard-earned money was used to cover the company’s financial holes before they were let go.
“The Director-General from the communications department had the decency to tell us that our money, our pension money saved the Post Office,” said former worker Jackson Khoza. “How do you use workers’ pensions to keep a company afloat, retrench those very workers, and then give them nothing when they leave?”
Workers also raised concerns about unfair treatment during the retrenchment process. Some stated that floor workers lost their jobs while others were moved between departments to fill the same spaces.
Maria Mogotlane explained that stopped payments to medical aids and other policies left many people trapped in deep personal debt.
“The Post Office was deducting our pension monies, but they were not going to the relevant sources,” Mogotlane said. “They left us in huge debts with service providers. The worst part is that we can’t even try to pay because we are only getting a small portion of our money, and the rest is gone.”
The marchers ended the protest by handing over a formal memorandum of demands to the Presidency, National Treasury, and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA).
Their main demands include:
– Full payout of all deducted pension money, including interest;
– An independent forensic investigation into why employee deductions were not paid over;
– A clear review of how the 2024 retrenchments were handled.
