Post Offices open only four days a week during curfew

The Postmaster General says that Post Offices island-wide will be open only on four days a week during the quarantine curfew period. 

He stated that starting this week, Post Offices will only be open on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday during the curfew period. 

Postmaster General Ranjith Ariyaratne stated that within the backdrop of the government declaring the Postal Service as an essential service through a gazette notification, it had been decided to keep post offices open for six days a week. 

However, considering the prevailing transportation difficulties it was understood that maintaining this would prove problematic and therefore based on the requests made by the trade unions, the matter was discussed with the Minister of Mass Media and the Secretary to the ministry. 

As a result of that, it was decided that effective from this week Post Offices would remain closed on Wednesday and Thursday and that they would remain open only on four days of the week. 

He added that over 500 employees of the Department of Posts have been infected with Covid-19 along with their family members and this has led to the closure of around 50 post offices.