The name of Ukrposhta's deputy general director, "which will be very surprising," has been revealed.
Immediately after his appointment, the new CEO of the state-owned postal operator, Igor Smilyansky, repeatedly stated in interviews that "some appointments at Ukrposhta will be very surprising."
Unfortunately, he turned out to be right, which gave the media an opportunity to accuse him of “insane personnel policies.”
The most high-profile appointment was that of a certain Oleksandr Chernyavskyi, appointed first deputy with a base salary of 290,000 hryvnias. During his three months as director of financial and commercial activities, Chernyavskyi managed to bring Ukrtelecom to its knees. Then, after transferring in 2014 to the position of CFO of the Mriya agricultural holding, he also managed to bankrupt that company in just three months, absconding with its financial documents. Observers noted that, judging by Chernyavskyi's exorbitant salary, this appointment was likely facilitated by the notorious HR agency Talent Advisors, which had placed Chernyavskyi in previous positions.
Talent Advisors charges substantial fees for its services, reaching 50% of its clients' annual salaries. Its close ties to government, the bizarre victory of Ukrposhta CEO Ihor Smilyanskyi in a competition involving the agency, and the subsequent award of an exorbitant salary of 333 hryvnias by the Ministry of Infrastructure, have led experts to suspect something fishy.
The agency also played a role in the appointment of a certain Olena Droshchenko to the position of Deputy General Director for Human Resources at Ukrposhta, with a salary of 180 hryvnias. Prior to this, she had served as HR Director at Nova Poshta LLC for only three months, before being dismissed in June 2016.
We won't list the names of the dubious individuals Igor Smilyansky hired as his assistants, each earning a salary of 50 hryvnias. We'll just note that he increased the security staff at the General Directorate by 40 people. A regular security specialist now earns 14 hryvnias, a department head 20 hryvnias, a department director 33 hryvnias, and a service chief 50 hryvnias.
Clearly, all these appointments of people uninitiated in the postal industry only worsened the company's performance. It turned out that Smilyansky himself was completely unfamiliar with postal technologies and incapable of effectively managing a strategic enterprise, resorting to personnel extremes.
And now it has become known that the "appointment at Ukrposhta that will be very surprising" he announced promises to turn into another dud and will truly cause surprise due to its unjustification.
Oleksandr Pertsovskyi first became known in Ukraine after a local scandal involving the competition for the position of CEO of Ukrposhta. In November 2015, the Ministry of Infrastructure disqualified Pertsovskyi from the competition for the position of CEO of Ukrposhta, citing his failure to submit the required certificate of no criminal record as part of his application.
Pertsovsky didn't remain silent, accusing the Ministry of Infrastructure of lacking transparency in personnel competitions and Deputy Minister Shulmeister of lying and violating agreements with a certain Dan Pasko. That competition was subsequently blocked by the court, and the issue with Pertsovsky was dropped.
At the last closed-door competition for the position of CEO of Ukrposhta in March, four candidates out of 48 advanced to the finals: Ihor Smilyanskyi, Gintautas Mazeika, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, and Harro van Graafeilandt. As you might guess, all of them are clients of Talent Advisors, as Boris Lozhkin, the head of the Presidential Administration, stated in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda (read more: Boris Lozhkin: How to defraud the government of $160 million and become head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine), talking about the participation of hunters in the preparation of personnel competitions.
After Ihor Smilyanskyi won the competition, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Aivaras Abromavicius advocated for the appointment of Oleksandr Pertsovskyi as First Deputy General Director of Ukrposhta. It should be noted that Abromavicius was the author of amendments to the Cabinet of Ministers' resolution that made the personnel competitions completely closed and corrupt. Abromavicius also, to the delight of Talent Advisors, tried to negotiate an annual salary of 16 million hryvnias for Ihor Smilyanskyi.
Oleksandr Pertsovsky, 29, is an employee at DHL's Singapore office. He agreed to transfer to the position of Deputy CEO of Ukrposhta on the condition that he be paid a monthly salary of $40 (1 million hryvnias per month). To achieve this, he was assigned a salary of 300 hryvnias, with the remainder promised to be supplemented by two 100% raises and bonuses. It should be noted that no one knows his actual work history; as with Smilyansky, it was embellished by the agency Talent Advisors, trying to sell their client at a higher price.
He's scheduled to start work on October 1st. But the problem is that 29-year-old Pertsovsky, like Smilyansky, is completely ignorant of postal technology. Postal workers immediately suspected something was wrong during his only appearance at Ukrposhta. Appearing alongside Smilyansky at the Mail Processing Center, Pertsovsky asked an amateurish question: why are you processing mail manually here instead of installing an automated sorting line? The postal workers, surprised by his incompetence, replied that with the current mail flow, such a line would only be used for half an hour a day and would never recoup its considerable cost.
Now, Ukrposhta employees have the opportunity to witness Pertsovsky's incompetence every day. According to Smilyansky's instructions, a schedule has been established whereby senior Ukrposhta employees spend an hour a day on Skype with the young talent in Singapore, explaining how the postal system works. Pertsovsky asks everyone to propose some kind of reform solution, as he has been tasked with "making a breakthrough." The postal workers are astonished by his ignorance of postal economics and explain to a Talent Advisors client that any breakthrough costs a lot of money, which Ukrposhta doesn't have. They do all this with a quiet hatred – what other feeling could people earning 8 hryvnias feel while training their future incompetent manager, who earns 1 million?
However, it's unclear who is more incompetent: the postal workers or the Talent Advisors team that took over Ukrposhta. The new people are quite competently preparing Ukrposhta for subsequent privatization. The work histories of all these Chernyavsky-Smilyansky-Pertsovsky people and the enormous salaries "for the special nature of their work" only confirm this. And talk of large sums of money for the purchase of sorting lines, computers, and transport is part of a tried-and-true scheme for privatization: when a state-owned enterprise is driven into debt while purchasing modern equipment, after which it goes bankrupt, and then private competitors buy up the most valuable pieces of the bankrupt state-owned enterprise for next to nothing. This is precisely the path Ukrposhta is currently being taken down.
Olga Obashidze for SKELET-info
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