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SIR: David Brown (Chronicle, Letters, January 20) quite rightly highlights the deficiencies in the current Royal Mail model of customer focused mail delivery service and identifies the company as a poor employer focused on profit.
How true, totally representative of such large highly competitive organisations where employees become low-paid robots.
He identifies Covid as an excuse for absence causing delivery delays.
Whilst the lack of corporate contingency plans during the past two years of the pandemic is obviously a factor, the 15,000 staff who were absent from work in the first week of January should not be blamed for delays in 80 post codes.
Winchester sorting office has had up to 40 staff unwell at any one time.
READ MORE HERE: Prince Charles statue unveiling to cause long traffic delays in Winchester tomorrow (Thursday)
Royal Mail was privatised in 2016. In 2018 it was fined £50m by OfCOM for breaching competition law and again in 2020 a fine of £1.5m for missing delivery targets.
In March 2021 it made pre-tax profits of £726m and in November 2021 it returned a £400m special dividend worth 6.7p per share to shareholders.
This is the problem, the privatisation of a nationalised organisation for the sole intention of making profit for shareholders.
Whatever the pre-privatisation problems there may have been, the sale of an essential national utility for private profit obliterates the focus, a public service. There is strong reason to believe that as a public corporation it could have done better in the past 6/7 years with profits returned to investment, research, development and improvement.
These strategic objectives would underpin the essential care and consideration of the excellent work force. In previous times, I worked for several years as a temporary seasonal postman.
It is a remarkable, worthwhile but challenging all-weather job. We should be very grateful to all our wonderful posties who have been able to work through two demanding years, thanking them for their personal service.Privatisation is not the answer, well managed and investment in public ownership is.
Peter Rees,
Monarch Way,
Winchester
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