The South African Post Office (Sapo) retail branches will remain open during the nationwide lockdown to facilitate the payments of South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) social grants, however Sapo’s mail services, parcel deliveries and other support operations will be suspended.

Sapo announced that the social grants payments function was an essential service that was exempted from the nationwide lockdown and 882 of its branches would provide these services during this period.

Sapo acting CEO Ivumile Nongogo welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision that Sapo branches must continue to operate.

He said Sapo was cognisant of the importance of social grants for a sizeable part of the country’s population, constituting mostly vulnerable people.

Nongogo explained that measures have been put in place to minimise transmission risks.

“Sapo’s retail employees will be restricted to operating beyond one meter of each other. Measures have also been put in place to control the distance between queueing customers, as well as providing requisite queue marshalling services during peak times in the busy branches. Hygiene-improving provisions such as sanitisers, gloves and masks are being made available to retail employees,” he added.

Meanwhile, Sapo will be suspending its mail services, parcel deliveries and other support operations in conformance with the 21-day lockdown.

It urged customers not to place any mail items in post boxes as mail collections will be completely suspended. The Sapo customer services contact centre will also not be available either by telephone or email, and customers are urged to not expect any outstanding deliveries to take place during this time.