《TAIPEI TIMES》Post offices open on two Saturdays for vouchers

CONVENIENCE: Normally, only 284 post offices stay open on Saturdays, mostly until noon, but the postal firm has decided to open all offices to distribute the vouchers

By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

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More than 1,200 post offices nationwide will be open on two Saturdays — July 18 and July 25 — for people to purchase Triple Stimulus Vouchers, Chunghwa Post said yesterday.

The Executive Yuan is to release the vouchers on July 15, which falls on a Wednesday.

In addition to electronic vouchers, people can purchase physical vouchers at post offices and convenience stores nationwide.

“We have 284 post offices that are open on Saturdays and most of them are open only until noon. To make it convenient for office workers to purchase vouchers, we are planning to have all of our post offices — 1,299 in total — to remain open the entire day on July 18 and July 25,” Chunghwa Post associate manager Kuo Chun-yang （郭純陽） said.

The postal company has estimated that crowds are more likely to occur within the first two weeks of the vouchers’ release, particularly on July 15, 16 and 18, as well as the following week, Kuo said.

“Our experience tells us that we have more customers on weekends than during the week, as most office workers might not have time to run errands on weekdays and would take advantage of Saturday to visit a post office. A similar situation might also occur when people try to buy the vouchers,” he said.

To avoid a repeat of the chaotic scenes that happened when people tried to buy masks earlier this year, post office employees would be asked to limit the processing time for each customer to less than two minutes to reduce the waiting time, Kuo said.

The postal company would have sufficient workers to ensure that the vouchers can be distributed smoothly, he added.

In addition to about 6,000 employees at the service windows, the company plans to add about 1,000 more personnel to help with the distribution of the vouchers, including volunteers, administrative staff members and temporary workers in a Ministry of Labor job program.

A “voucher map” introduced by the Executive Yuan would be updated every two hours to allow people to check voucher inventories nationwide, Kuo said, adding that postal workers would monitor the situation on site.

People have until the end of this year to purchase the vouchers, “so they do not have to rush to buy them during the first two weeks,” he added.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES