Mail chiefs warn of covid delivery backlog due to staff being off work with the virus

Renfrewshire residents are set to be hit by mail delays as covid takes its toll.Homes in Erskine and areas of Paisley are set to be hit by postal disruption as Royal Mail bosses say deliveries have been hit by staff absences.They warn that rising numbers of workers being forced to self-isolate and high numbers of sick employees are affecting rounds as organisations across the board are hit by shortages fuelled by the highly-transmissible Omicron variant.We told on Thursday how irate Paisley residents complained of waiting up to three weeks for mail to be delivered.Some reported even missing hospital appointments as letters ot snarled up in the postal backlog.Residents all over Paisley, including Glenburn, Linwood and Ferguslie, were hit as residents complaining of Christmas cards arriving three weeks late and receiving up to 20 delayed letters in one mail drop.Many resorted to attending at the town's Underwood Road delivery office themselves in a bid to uplift their undelivered correspondence.Don't miss the latest headlines from around Renfrewshire.

Sign up to our newsletters here.One 77-year-old retired Royal Mail worker claimed postal staff were being ordered to focus on parcel deliveries leaving letters "piling up" at the sorting office.The former manager, who lives in the town's Falside Avenue said: "It’s just not good enough.

People are missing out on important documents and information they have a right to be receiving regularly. "People are entitled to have their mail delivered.

We are going two weeks or more here with not a single letter. We just aren’t getting any deliveries. We got one on January 7 and those were the first letters we had received since Christmas Eve." Royal Mail had claimed the "vast majority"