Posta to take up cash transfer

 

Teleposta House in Town Centre, Nairobi County. [PHOTO: ANGELA MAINA/ STANDARD.]

The government cash transfers are soon to be handled by the Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) as part of efforts to sustain it financially.

The role had been removed from PCK owing to inefficiencies and delays to access the monies by those under the government safety net such as the elderly, orphans and vulnerable children.

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) Director-General Mercy Wanjau said that they had okayed the move to help PCK stay afloat.

"The Covid-19 crisis has caused new thinking, the closure of the skies severely affected it (PCK) and this has led to reflection and thinking of doing things differently," she said.

"It has a strong footprint countrywide ... the need to leverage and align for delivery of some of these public services has never been more critical,” Wanjau said yesterday at a Nairobi hotel during the World Post Day, which marked to celebrate postal services

Dan Kagwe, the Postmaster-General, said that the firm had embarked on new revenue models as he dismissed claims that Kenya Posta was on its “deathbed.”

He said that in its 145-year history, it had only asked for a government bailout once and it was this year owing to the impact of coronavirus.

The government recently gave it Sh810 million that went towards payment of salaries. "Posta is going nowhere … The post office has always sustained itself and I don’t see a situation where it will fail to do so,” he said.

He said the future was in e-commerce, door-to-door delivery and franchising their branches.