Post Office and Sassa get three weeks for plan

The interministerial committee on social security has given the South African Post Office (Sapo) and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) three weeks to develop a pass-over plan that will ensure the lawful, efficient and cost-effective provision of grants in 2018.

However, the panel of experts appointed by the Constitutional Court has raised concerns about the committee’s work and flagged the Post Office’s involvement in grant distribution as potentially expensive because a competitive bidding process was absent.

But there had been an inprinciple agreement with the banking sector on a hybrid model, which would entail the introduction of Sassa special accounts and the setting up of commercial accounts through which funds would be disbursed, MPs heard on Tuesday.

Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe painted on Tuesday a rosy picture of progress while briefing a joint sitting of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts and the portfolio committee on social development, saying protocols had been drafted and signed on Friday for the provision of grants in 2018.

Rabebe, who heads the interministerial committee, said that he, Sassa and the Post Office had signed an implementation protocol on Friday to ensure that the April 1 deadline by which Net1 subsidiary Cash Paymaster Services had to be phased out, as per a Constitutional Court order, would be met.

The parties would submit a detailed project plan to the interministerial committee on December 6 and to the panel of experts by December 8.

“The meeting with the financial institutions and [Banking Association SA] ... on November 10 agreed on the principle of establishing a special affordable account for Sassa beneficiaries and how to enhance their role in Sassa grants. The parties agreed to further meetings to discuss details of commercial accounts and the expansion of their joint activities,” he said.

A hybrid model was being investigated with strategies in the making that included the Department of Home Affairs, Sassa and the banks.

But the expert panel’s second report was scathing of Sassa.

It recommended that urgent meetings — under the auspices of the South African Revenue Service and the Treasury — be held to deal with Sassa’s lack of decisive action.

DA MP Tim Brauteseth said it was vital that Sassa should have back-up plans if Sapo proved to be an expensive alternative, as the expert panel had noted in its report, which was also discussed in the joint sitting.