Chairman of the Board of the Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC) Bishop Juan Edghill, responded to protests by laid-off casual employees of the organisation in a press briefing, held yesterday at the GPOC Headquarters located at North Road and Robb Street.

Edghill stated that the organisation cannot continue to carry the excess burden of unregularised employment. Figures as of December 29, 2009 show that the Wage Bill of the GPOC was in excess of 10 million dollars above the 25 million allocated for the wages of casual workers in the year 2009, amounting to a figure of over 35 million.

He said that after a statuary meeting hosted Wednesday last, a general consensus was reached that the services of all casual employees employed by the corporation, should be terminated by December 31, 2009. Edghill said that according to reports from the Human Resources and Finance Department close to 130 casuals were laid off as December 29, 2009.

Pointing out that casuals had been relayed this information at an earlier date by the organisation, Edghill denied all knowledge of pending protests actions, stating “We had no notice and we didn’t know there was a dispute”.

As defined at the meeting, a “casual” is an employee who is employed for a period of up to 28 days in the place of an employee who has gone on leave or some other circumstance where extra workers are needed. However a situation arose where an employee would return and a casual would remain working. Edghill said that the casuals were all laid off due to the fact that the organisation did not wish to appear prejudiced by handpicking workers, stressing that the intent of the actions taken was not to displace anyone but to regularise the system.

It was noted that a casual does not have to be a very qualified person due to the short term nature of their job, but due to the casuals staying on, there arose a situation where there was long term employment of some poorly qualified persons.

Reiterating that the GPOC cannot continue to carry “excess burden”, Edghill said that the organisation is not a “charity”, but a business and are thus expected to deliver as if the organisation cannot produce, they will be unable to pay their staff. Edghill said that situation has turned into a “sympathy situation” the excuse often used is that the organisation does not want to take bread out of persons mouths but that bread is being taken out of the regular employees mouths since the employees were not paid their 6% increase as other government employees were.

Relating to an earlier issue of 21 GPOC workers who were entangled in allegations of fraud to the tune of $ 1, 055,000 (one million and fifty-five thousand), Edghill said that all parties involved will have to pay back the full sum to the GPOC. The lost sums will be retrieved through system where the employees will not be receiving their leave passages. They are also to be “red circled” and will not be eligible for any promotions for a year. However, he was quick to point out that the vast majority of the employees involved were being disciplined for negligence and not for dishonesty as the money would not have been lost if they had been following standard procedure.

Edghill said al casuals are eligible to reapply by tomorrow (Wednesday) for jobs in the organisation. All postal services will remain unhindered by the situation and freely accessible to the public.