Ritika Janiya
The problem that the Post Office is battling with, where technology is supposed to make life easier, is one of a kind. As many as thousands of post office workers across the country are still battling issues arising from a faulty computer system called Horizon, which has caused much financial woe to many of them.
According to a recent survey, almost all of the operators who mentioned their problems told about “financial shortfalls.” It is translated as the discrepancies in their accounts make them feel they have lost money. The inquiry into this mess is heard again nowadays, and results of the survey reveal that the level of trust in the post office remains low, while most of them consider the received compensation too tinny.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
In this survey, some 98% of the operators who said they had a problem identified that problem with the Horizon system. Many have long noticed strange discrepancies in their accounts since January 2020. Of the 16,000 operators polled, some 70% said they had problems with the system. Problems reported include inexplicable errors which it’s impossible to determine how much money they truly possess.
Next week, the outgoing Post Office CEO Nick Read will be called; he is accused of trying to get rid of two of the post office operators from the board. Ismail and Elliot Jacobs were brought in as efforts to fix the problems and make things right. A further allegation against Read is that he tried to block them from attending to certain essential meetings on pay and bonuses.
Among them is Ismail, who serves as the company’s non-executive director since 2021. He seems to describe when the executives at the Post Office were not welcoming. To his surprise, someone at the executive table said to him that they didn’t want to work with him and Jacobs as it made them feel uneasy.
Ismail even remembered a discussion with former HR director Jane Davies on how Read was unhappy to have postmasters on the board. It highlighted questions, “Whether post office actually wants to hear from those who have problems firsthand.”
Facing Discrimination
The questionnaire threw out another disturbing fact. According to it, the post office operators from the minority ethnic groups are more likely to have their suspension threatened than the white post office operators. Eight of them reported being suspended or threatened with suspension because of maladjustment in their accounts.
The numbers don’t lie, of course – 12% were from ethnic minority backgrounds, whereas 17% were of Asian or Asian British origin. Disturbing enough, that might be, but it’s worse when it seems some have to face challenges merely because of their background.
Importantly, there are over 7,000 independent post office operators in the UK. In a survey last year, the respondents were 44% Asian, whereas only 1% said they had a mixed white and Asian background. That diversity is key, and it is a crying shame that this group does not feel treated fairly.
A Dark History
Things become murkier still when we look back to last year’s documents released. These would show that lawyers meant to help bring about a solution to the issues with Horizon used racist terms for describing Black workers. One offending language is unacceptable, even in today’s rhetoric. This means that deep-rooted problems rather than purely technical problems lie within the organization.
The scandal over Horizon is now the subject of a public inquiry, which will cause immense stress to many of the post office operators whose lives were blighted by charges of financial wrongdoing over more than ten years. Hundreds of people were prosecuted for crimes that many never committed, while others got away with their crimes. Now it appears many of these discrepancies were actually caused by bugs in the Horizon system.
Even with all these issues, 34% of respondents indicated that the system sometimes displayed them more money than it should have. When asked how they corrected such discrepancies, nearly 75% reported having to tap their branch’s money or even their personal funds to sort things out.
Technical Troubles
What is in question? The most widespread issues are the freezes on the screen and log-outs, in that it renders it hard for the operators to operate effectively. The company behind this horizon system is Fujitsu that has been given one of the largest contracts in history for £2.5 billion for the contract but still does not seem to end the troubles operators are faced with.
The Post Office says it wants to work with the inquiry and to learn from the mistakes of the past. A spokesperson said: “A big part of this work is actually listening directly to current and former postmasters. We want to learn lessons from the past and make the organisation better.”.
