It was first announced that the South African Post Office will not open during lockdown as it was not regarded as one of the sectors providing essential services but that was overturned by President Cyril Ramaphosa after only two days into lockdown as the Post office was announced that they will be offering essential service of processing social grants.
The South African government is now using South African Post office to distribute the payment of social grants to beneficiaries in all nine provinces of South Africa. There are a number of different social grants in South Africa and mostly the government use banks to pay those grants where most of elderly people prefer collecting their grants straight from post office as the system is simple.
Older persons’ grant is normally paid through post office so the government identified a chance to avoid overcrowding at supermarkets were elders usually collect their grants by using post office as one of the best alternatives for grant collecting by elders. A few other grants are also collected at post office but the beneficiaries of those grants prefer banks or grocery stores to collect their grants.
It was also announce by President Cyril Ramaphosa that the South African Post Office will fully reopen on the 1st May 2020 for all transactions as now they have identified a gap left by closing other departments of post office. This means that all employees of South African Post Office will be back at work on the 1st of may 2020 where they will resume with their daily tasks not forgetting the measures set by government to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
Since the normal post office closed on the 26th March 2020, there has been a number of complaints from the public as they were expecting important documents to be sent to them via post office as they have not received them yet and not sure whether they will receive their documents soon. The government saw it fit that the post office should operate during phase four of the lockdown as there are a lot of problems when the post office is closed.
There are measures put in place by management of South African Post Office to help in the fight against the spread of the coronavirus. Walk-in clients are required to have face masks on and also hand gloves. Those who do not have hand gloves are sanitized at the entrances of all post offices around South Africa.
