Postal worker caught dumping parcels in trash; Hundreds of Hengelo residents affected

Hundreds of Hengelo residents have lost three weeks of mail. A temporary postal worker at PostNL had been dumping the mail and parcels in a waste paper container, which has already been emptied and the content destroyed, Tubantia reports.

The temporary worker was covering for the regular postal worker of the Veldwijk Noord and Groot Driene districts, who was on holiday for three weeks. PostNL realized something was wrong when multiple residents told De Twentsche Courant that they hadn’t received any mail in weeks. They reported waiting for important mail including credit cards, medical results, and court documents, among other things.

PostNL launched an investigation on Monday and found that “the temporary deliverer withheld and threw away the mail during this period, resulting in the loss of mail for these neighborhoods.” The postal company said it dismissed the deliverer. “We are currently investigating what further steps we can take,” PostNL told Tubantia.

The postal company believes the delivery person dumped the missing mail and packages into a waste paper container in the city. Twente Milieu, which manages the public container, confirmed that PostNL had asked about whether it had already been emptied. “That was indeed the case. We could no longer do anything for them. The contents were then immediately taken to the waste processor Remondis in Enschede.”

An employee for the waste processor told Tubantia that incoming waste paper is almost immediately taken for destruction in Alblasserdam. “If that container arrived here at the end of last week, its contents are long gone. There’s nothing left of it.”

Locals are very annoyed. “I hope PostNL takes measures to prevent situations like this from happening again. Because this can’t be right? The only good thing is that our mail isn’t lying on the street somewhere, ending up in the wrong hands. There must be confidential information in it,” affected resident Linda Koel told the newspaper. “I hope PostNL will continue to work on this, even if we don’t get our mail back.”