Audit of the management of the Czech Post: complaints cumulate, the "Partner Post Office" project lags behind
Press release to audit No. 17/27 – 27. 8. 2018
The Supreme Audit Office scrutinized the management of Česká pošta, s.p. (the Czech Post, state enterprise), between 2015 and 2017. Auditors examined, for example, how the Czech Post had managed the state property, how it had awarded public contracts, or what economic results it had achieved. At the Ministry of the Interior, as the founder of the state enterprise, they mainly focused on how the resort had supervised the management of the Czech Post. Auditors examined assets and funds of CZK 4.2 billion, of which CZK 857 million were public contracts.
The audit has revealed that the Czech Post was unable to transfer its branches to so-called Partner Post Offices which are to be operated by municipalities, entrepreneurs or legal persons, and to provide basic postal services except for deliveries of consignments to the addressees. At the end of 2017, 648 post branches were to be transferred to Partner Post Offices, but until then 428 branches had been transferred. In total, 2 527 post offices will be transferred to Partner Post Offices by 2025.
The SAO also focused on the selected purchases of the Czech Post and revealed some partial deficiencies. Auditors, for example, found that the company had purchased furniture for its branches in 2015 and 2016 but it had almost failed to use it. Still in 2018, approximately 90% of all of this furniture worth more than CZK 4 million was stored in the storerooms of the Czech Post.
In 2015, the Czech Post provided a positive economic result of CZK 241 million, in 2017 it was only CZK 78 million. One of the reasons for the deterioration of the result was, for instance, a drop in revenue from postal services.
The total number of complaints for services provided by the Czech Post in 2016 was approximately 55 000. In 2017, the number of submissions increased to 66 000. The overwhelming majority of these submissions concerned the company's main business - the delivery of postal items, which accounted for 82% of all complaints.
The audit of the Ministry of the Interior, the founder of the state enterprise, showed that in the years under review it did not carry out any public-law inspection at the Czech Post. There is also no long-term development concept for the Czech Post, which the resort should have developed and according to which the company should develop so.
Communication Department
Supreme Audit Office