Pretoria residents left in the lurch as Post Office branches close without notice

Hundreds of Pretoria residents were left in the lurch as the SA Post Offices closed several of its branches across the city recently.

Elderly Pretoria east resident Elke Geggus, who migrated to South Africa with her parents when she was a baby from then war-frustrated Germany in 1953, said she had used post office services to connect with her family back in her birth country over the past 30 years.

This has, however, changed in the past two to three months as the Moreletapark branch closed with a “going on auction” notice.

Geggus, who had a postbox at the branch, said she did not receive any notification that the branch would close nor where she could get her letters from now on.

“In January, my husband paid almost R400 for our postbox. Shortly thereafter the branch was closed, but we were not told of this before the closure,” she said.

“Our relatives are sending us letters and we don’t receive them. We do not even know where to get them now.”

Geggus said after the closure she tried to enquire several times about where she could get her letters, but there has been no effective assistance.

“We might have important letters that are piling up wherever they keep them; letters may be from the government or any other place where we registered our postbox address, but we have no idea where to access them,” she said.

SA Post Office spokesperson Johan Kruger confirmed that the building that housed the Moreletapark branch was sold.

“Customers who used to collect their items from this post office can now collect them from the Garsfontein post office, which is 5.5km away in Winifred Yell Street,” Kruger said.

“The Moreletapark post boxes are not part of the structure and will be serviced at least until the end of 2022.

“Should they be moved elsewhere after that, the renters will be informed through a note in their postbox and an SMS.”

“The reason why customers did not see mail in their boxes was because the Post Office changed to a new provider of delivery vehicles and that did not go as smoothly as we had planned.

“The fleet is now complete and we have launched a program to deliver all items on hand. The customers will definitely see a big improvement in delivery standards from now on.”

Post Office CEO Nomkhita Mona told parliament that they planned to permanently close 130 branches across the country.

“We have a whole lot of reasons for this, which include lack of profitability and having too many branches within a distance of each other,” she said.

“There is a proliferation of branches within a very short radius. In some instances, we found there were three branches apart within a 5km distance. We used this to consolidate and move these into one branch,” she said.

As of May, 27 branches were closed due to non-payment of rentals. She said the state-owned entity was looking into stabilising its finances and paying landlords, but some of the closed branches would not be opened.

“It is important to note that we need to respect the current contracts we have with landlords. If we step out of the agreements quickly, then we could face penalties. We are closing branches in a staggered format and we have 80 to go,” she said.

She said some branches were closed due to constant break-ins.

A few other branches closed down in Pretoria include a Silverton branch that was closed last year and the Elarduspark post office was also permanently closed.

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