He was brought to South Africa by this supermarket group and when he ended a nation wide television broadcast to promote healthy eating he appeared on TV in a motorcycle crash helmet saying: “With Sixty 60 you’ll get it quicker than anybody else.”
On the Checkers’ bags that deliveries come in there is a picture of a scooter and below it in capital letters it says: “SPEED IS EVERYTHING” and it goes on to tell customers: “Our driver cannot wait while you unpack your order.”
Their delivery motorcyclists can be seen all over the country exceeding the speed limits, dodging between the traffic and edging over the white stop line at traffic lights so they can get ahead of everybody else when the lights go green. They are also dying or being seriously injured.
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| A Checkers delivery bike comes to grief |
After two Checkers Sixty 60 motorcyclists were involved in accidents in Mossel Bay the local weekly paper the Mossel Bay Advertiser asked Shoprite, which owns Checkers, if it would give its deliver drivers protective clothing or provide them with a safer means of transport for delivering grocers because they were particularly vulnerable on a motorbike.
The answer they got was effectively “It’s not our problem because the Sixty 60 riders are independent contractors.” Pingo a last mile delivery company recruits them and makes sure they have the required cell phones, are properly licensed and have their own bike that is in good condition. But essentially they are own there own.
I emailed Pieter Engelbrecht, the Chief Operating Office of Shoprite Checkers in an effort to get his view of the situation. I told him that all the indications were that his group was “putting death on the roads” by stressing the need for “speed” to their delivery drivers with a complete disregard for their lives.
“All that your Shoprite Holdings Group
appears to be concerned about is making money regardless of how many lives get
terminated or seriously affected in the process,” I wrote.
I got no proper reply from him. All I got was a long winded disclaimer headed “Standard E-mail Disclaimer” that had absolutely nothing to do with delivery riders.
Checkers customers give their orders on-line and the delivery guys are expected to collect them from the stores and deliver them in under 60 minutes. It seems that no regard is taken for the fact that the distances they have to travel varies and that the roads are more congested at certain times of day than at others. The delivery fee to the customer is R35 with R20 of this going to the rider. They can expect to make around R1 800 to R2 200 per week and out of this they have to pay all the expenses of running their bikes.
Regards,
Jon
P.S. There are top notch CEO heads of huge companies and then there are others. When I emailed the head of Growthpoint Properties Norbert Sasse at 8.23 pm on a Monday he replied at 10.01 the same evening. His company owns retail and other properties in high quality areas all over South Africa, as well as properties in Eastern Europe, Australia and the United Kingdom. It is also the largest Real Estate Investment Trust firm on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. So I think Engelbrecht has a way to go to reach Sasse's high standard.
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