If you collect your grant payment at your local Post Office, you will have to make other arrangements. Picture: David Ritchie
If you collect your grant payment at your local Post Office, you will have to make other arrangements.
According to the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) grant beneficiaries will no longer be able to collect their grants from the Post Office and Postbank.
Physical cash payment points (CPPs) will be phased out according to the organisations.
The phasing out will take place from January 2024. The hope is that by March 2024 the process will be finalised and completed.
This step by Sassa was initially announced in 2018 and was created as a way to deter cash-in-transit heists and reduce the stress on the struggling Post Office.
"Post Office branches will continue to assist Sassa beneficiaries with non-cash payments such as card reinsurances, PIN resets, printing of statements, and other such non-cash services. What will be discontinued is only the payment of cash to beneficiaries. So, the Post Office branch services will continue but only for non-cash transactions," Bongani Diako, a spokesperson for PostBank said.
The Business Rescue Plan to restructure the Post Office has also been approved.
The plan will see the reduction of the branch network to about 600 branches that will be staffed by about 5 000 employees in the country.
According to unions, this could see 6 000 employees being retrenched.
This is according to a statement released last week by Joint Business Rescue Practitioners of the Post Office, Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons.
The practitioners said they were pleased that their plan was voted for by the majority of creditors during a meeting last week.
Rooplal said they believed that their strategy could restructure the Post Office into a future-proofed business that could provide inclusive communications for all. He said the entity fulfilled an important social mandate intended to provide key basic communications services to all households, including in the rural areas, where access to wi-fi, smartphones and printers are not a given.
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