NZ Post Asks All Kiwis To Please Strictly Respect The 2 Metre Rule With Posties And Couriers

As an essential service for New Zealanders, NZ Post’s first priority during the level 4 lockdown is the health, safety, support and wellbeing of our people.

NZ Post Chief Executive, David Walsh says, “One issue that has come to the foreground in the last 48 hours is reports of members of the public closely approaching NZ Post delivery people – our posties, rural delivery people and couriers – and in some instances, attempting to make physical contact such as patting them on the back.”

“Whilst we greatly appreciate the intent, NZ Post asks all members of the public to strictly respect the 2 metre bubble rule for our delivery people – including couriers and posties. Our people’s health and safety is our number one priority, and if this is compromised, our delivery service of essential items to New Zealanders’ homes will not be able to continue.

“Please – do not make any physical contact of any kind with your courier or postie. While we know you’re grateful to your delivery person, it is absolutely imperative that all members of the public respect this rule. We can’t have the safety of our people compromised. We do encourage you however to call out your thanks and words of encouragement to our people as they are out and about continuing to keep New Zealand running,” says David Walsh.

“NZ Post wants to thank every one of our team who are providing services to New Zealanders at this time and reassure people that our health and safety measures for COVID-19 will be constantly reviewed and updated as necessary.”

Since the start of this event approximately nine weeks ago, we have adopted a range of practices and measures to keep our people safe. We have been reviewing COVID-19 information from a wide range of sources and keeping on top of the latest advice relating to the virus, how it spreads and how to control it. We have engaged an Occupational Physician, who is also advising us and providing additional support over and above what is available from the Ministry of Health.

We are following all Government advice. This includes changing the way we deliver items and observing strict physical distancing of two metres, for both our delivery people, and in our operational sites. We have also implemented new processes around shifts and tea breaks, to ensure effective physical distancing in our mail and parcel processing sites. Our cleaning services are essential for us. We have put in place extra measures to ensure that every site is cleaned every day – including real time updates for when each of our 200+ sites have been cleaned.

This is a unique situation and we acknowledge that there may be a short learning curve as we all adapt to this new way of working.

We will also be continuously providing our people with hand sanitisers and wipes, but as our network includes over 200 operational sites, we do acknowledge that there may be delays in restocking these. We are issuing further instructions to our teams as to what effective substitutes they should use in these instances.

“This is an unprecedented situation, and we are committing to continuing to work as hard as we can to make sure all of our people feel safe, and know what we are doing to protect them.

“The safety of our people is our priority, at any time, but ever-more so now. We’re really proud to be providing a vital service to New Zealand at this time, delivering those essential items that New Zealanders need,” says David Walsh.

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