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Portable POs offer ICT

By Damaria Senne, ITWeb senior journalist
Johannesburg, 06 Oct 2006

The South African Post Office (SAPO) deploy 20 portable post offices by the end of 2006, the Department of Communications says.

The transportable post offices, which are in line with government`s plans to provide ICT services to people through the post office, will provide online services, such as electronic banking, to users, a department spokesman says.

Communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri is expected to hand over the first post office to the Oshoek border post community, in Mpumalanga, on 9 October, the department says. The handover is part of the World Post Day celebrations taking place that day.

Communications director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole says celebrating World Post Day is the ideal platform to commit SA to meet the targets set in the 2005 declaration of the World Summit on the Information Society, which states governments must connect public libraries, cultural centres, museums, post offices and archives with ICT by 2015.

With the theme of World Post Day 2006 being "the post reaching everyone everywhere", it will be fitting to present the role of SAPO as a global e-service network that is empowering and mobilising citizens and connecting them to the rest of the world, Shope-Mafole says.

SAPO group executive Khutso Mampeule says his organisation is pleased to empower the citizens of Oshoek border post, who will now be afforded the opportunity to transact business with the rest of the world and communicate with friends and family.

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Post Office to offer e-banking
SAPO invests R430m in IT

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