On Tuesday 17 March 2020, the Metacom team under the leadership of our CEO, Réan van Niekerk and his executives, relented to the fact that we as a nation and a global community were facing an uncontrollable virus and the global pandemic was officially upon us.

Knowing that our core responsibility was towards our staff at Metacom and our clients, we mobilised across departmental team, including our risk committee to determine the looming restrictions to be enforced by the South African government and the needs and requirements of our clients, some who were destined to close because of the abovementioned restrictions and others who were continuing to trade as essential services.

A surreal and devastating time for our nation and the rest of the world as we came to terms with this pandemic. Our central management committee mobilised our workforce of over 100 staff to continue working remotely and constantly communicated with internal and external stakeholders to ensure minimal disruption to service delivery – as part of the process, we secured our essential services certification as a critical maintenance and repair vendor, servicing our clients who remained open during this time.

As at the beginning of April 2021, we are still under lockdown restrictions in South Africa, albeit at a lower level, with the ability to operate under the guise of the “new normal.”

We are working closely with our clients and staff to determine how this “new normal” will evolve and take guidance from our government and other specialists to try and assess the future as the virus and spin-off variants continue disruption, around the world.

The good news is that our clients remain upbeat and positive even though the hardship and devastation that the virus has caused, is still being assessed. We are grateful that through the protocols we have introduced at Metacom, we have had no loss of life and reported cases of the virus were minimal. This does not detract from the fact that we were fortunate, and that loss of life has become a reality.

We continue to monitor the situation, as most of the team return to work as part of the “new normal”.

“Look after your health, your family, your work, your responsibilities and obligations.  No matter what the future holds, it WILL be better if you do the right thing to the best of your ability now.” – Réan Van Niekerk, CEO of Metacom