Alex Trelinski
PALMA council will use a new company to notify people about fines after the current contractor CI Postal didn’t deliver notifications on time or employees simply dumped thousands of letters.
Sanctioned residents knew nothing about penalties until they got a fresh letter saying that had incurred an extra fine for late payment.
An action group was formed by them to protest about their rights being violated.
Two former CI Postal workers have been charged with falsifying notification receipts and throwing thousands of letters away into bins or tunnels.
One said that he disposed of 2,000 notifications in a day.
CI Postal’s contract expires at the end of March and Palma council has made it clear that they will not get an extension.
The authority has advertised a tender for €15.5 million to cover three years- a 40% rise on the current budget as the number of fines has tripled.
The contract is divided into two sections- namely notifications in Palma, which are currently covered by CI Postal, and outside the municipality by the national Correos postal service.
Following recent issues, the tender specifies that the winning bidder must ‘forsee and amend incidents’ with a guaranteed minimum of 12 delivery vehicles in Palma and a 20-string workforce.
Customer service will also have to be provided to deal with any queries via phone and email, as well as compiling consumer satisfaction reports.
