Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) – Letter to our Customers

Dear customer,

We wish to inform you that as the leadership of Altron & Netstar, we are implementing measures which are in line with the guidance from the Government of South Africa. The well-being of our employees remains of utmost importance to us.

We have established a committee at Group executive level that handles all matters related to the impact of Coronavirus on our business, employees and customers. The committee will monitor developments from the Government, review our position and recommend appropriate action.

We have embarked on a process to identify employees who are not customer-facing so that we can make provision for them to work from home. At the same time, we have restricted international, regional and domestic travel that is not business critical.  The following are the instructions we have given to all employees:

• If you have been to the following countries China, Iran, USA, Spain Italy, Europe, and South Korea since mid-February 2020, on private or business travel, please present yourself for testing and do not come to the office until you have been cleared by your health professional.
• Please refrain from travelling to the above-mentioned countries, which have now been identified as high-risk.
• Non-essential domestic travel is discouraged, consider working from home or use technology to conduct meetings and connect with partners, colleagues and customers.
• Working from home is encouraged and employees are advised to use technology to connect with customers

We are in regular consistent communication with our employees, encouraging them to take precautions in the workplace and at home.

We are also concerned for you as our customer and advise that we have initiated business impact analysis to ensure that the right contingency plans are in place. These involve immediate and ongoing actions to ensure business continuity of Netstar operations and services especially should there be an emergency.

Some of the measures within the Netstar Business Continuity Plan include:

• Promoting good hygiene and respect social distancing by limiting the number of people entering and moving within Netstar facilities.  Hand sanitisers have been deployed around our facilities, supported by poster and intranet awareness campaign and people entering the building are required to sanitise their hands.  
• The Netstar Call Centre work force is being split into two mirror teams operating from two geographically different sites to create more space between agents and limit possible infection.  This applies to our Emergency Call Centre, Planning and Customer Service departments.
• Netstar Technicians are being provided with sanitisers and latex gloves for their own and customer protection. All equipment and vehicles will be wiped down after installation and other work. There will be no personal interaction with customers.
• Netstar Customer Support and other interaction such as training will be done remotely using technology.
• Assessment of critical suppliers within the Netstar supply chain is in process to understand the exposure and impact to business.  

We will be continually expanding our action and further detail will always be available on request.

Kind regards

Pierre Bruwer
Group Managing Director