Gungubele revealed between 1 April 2020 and 5 May 2023, 314 branches were permanently closed.<\/p>\n
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were roughly 1,300 Post Office branches nationwide.<\/p>\n
The loss of 314 branches means the beleaguered state-owned mail carrier now has over 24% fewer branches.<\/p>\n
While SAPO previously attributed much of its downturn in business to Covid-19, it is interesting to note that only 22 of those closures happened during the height of the pandemic \u2014 the 2020\/2021 financial year.<\/p>\n
In the 2021\/2022 and 2022\/2023 financial years, a further 146 and 122 branches were closed, respectively.<\/p>\n
During the two months since the start of its current financial year, the Post Office closed another 24 branches.<\/p>\n
Assuming this year’s trend continues for the remaining months, SAPO could shutter close to 300 more branches in 2022\/2023.<\/p>\n
The Post Office has been losing money since 2013 and is now technically insolvent.<\/p>\n The entity has cost the taxpayer a pretty penny in bailouts amounting to R10.39 billion since 2014.<\/p>\n It was placed under provisional liquidation earlier this year after failing to pay its growing mountain of debt.<\/p>\n The government has approached the court to avert the impending liquidation in favour of a business rescue process.<\/p>\n It proposes to cut 7,000 of the roughly 11,000 SAPO employees to shed about R1.5 billion a year in employee costs.<\/p>\n Its losses have exceeded R2 billion a year over the past three years. As of March 2022, SAPO’s total liabilities exceeded its assets by R4.08 billion.<\/p>\n It is expected to make a net loss of R2.1 billion<\/strong><\/a> in the 2022\/2023 financial year.<\/p>\n In the past few years, the postal service has struggled to pay the rent and utility bills of some of its branches.<\/p>\n It has also failed to pay the appropriate employee contributions into pension and medical aid funds.<\/p>\n SAPO has seen a gradual downturn in business as many items previously delivered through physical mail\u2014 such as account statements and legal notices \u2014 are now being sent via e-mail.<\/p>\n South Africans have also increasingly turned to private couriers for deliveries of other packages due to SAPO’s infamous reputation for lost or delayed parcels.<\/p>\n A prime example of this was a Durban family that recently received a package sent from New York over 13 years ago<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Multiple MyBroadband tests in the past few years have also shown the Post Office performs very poorly compared to private courier services.<\/p>\n In one instance, a package sent from Gqeberha to Centurion took an eight-month trip<\/strong><\/a> across the country, only to return to its originating branch.<\/p>\n A significant customer that recently dropped<\/strong><\/a> SAPO’s services is Telkom.<\/p>\n The telecoms company informed subscribers that it no longer supports account payments at Post Office branches.<\/p>\n Telkom said this move intended to “streamline” payment processes for customers.<\/p>\n The fact that the telecoms operator is partially state-owned makes it all the more embarrassing for the wholly state-owned postal service.<\/p>\n DA MP Natasha Mazzone has warned the closing of SAPO branches would come at a cost to the poorest South Africans \u2014 social grant recipients.<\/p>\n “If this trend continues, individuals may be forced to travel long distances to the nearest Sassa outlet, exacerbating their already challenging circumstances,” Mazzone said.<\/p>\n Information from the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies has revealed that the Post Office has closed nearly a quarter of its branches in the past three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":497669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49317],"tags":[19623,35,72090,22355],"class_list":["post-497613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-services","tag-dianne-kohler-barnard","tag-headline","tag-mondli-gungubele","tag-south-african-post-office-sapo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497681,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497613\/revisions\/497681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Post-Office-new-headline.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOutperformed by private players<\/h2>\n
\nNow read: Uber One launches in South Africa \u2014 with money back for late deliveries<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"