Vienna - The plan by Austria's postal service Post AG to close 77 per cent of its post offices in the coming years will be put on hold by decree, Austrian Infrastructure Minister Werner Faymann announced Tuesday. As part of the restructuring plan, the state-owned Post also wants to lay off 9,000 of its 25,800 employees by 2015, according to Austrian media reports.
"I am pulling the emergency brake by decree," Faymann told the daily Kurier for its Wednesday edition. For six months, starting from January 2009, no post office may be closed, he said.
A plan to make sure that rural areas still had access to postal services should be developed in this period, said Faymann, who is slated to become Austria's next chancellor once his Social Democratic Party concludes at coalition pact with the conservative People's Party.
The company's board of directors, which is set to meet Wednesday, developed the plan in anticipation of the end of the state monopoly on letter services in 2012.
The downsizing plan was made public at a time when other state-owned companies face economic pressure.
The ailing flag carrier Austrian Airlines AG is set to be privatized by the end of the year, while telecommunications provider Telekom Austria AG announced Monday it would lay off 1,250 employees in 2009.
The Austrian state owns 51 per cent of Post, which in the first half of 2008 saw its revenues rise 7.3 per cent to 1.2 billion euros (1.5 billion dollars). At the same time, the company's operative income sank 3.6 per cent to 81.9 million euros.
