Sassa says sorry to top court over plan’s readiness

Pearl Bengu, CEO of the South African Social Services Agency (Sassa), has apologised to the Constitutional Court for creating the impression that Sassa was not transparent about having a contingency plan to deal with social grant payments to 2.8-million recipients who receive cash from paypoints administered by Cash Paymaster Services (CPS).

Bengu explained to the court the “contingency plan” referred to during a media briefing last Thursday was “not ripe for implementation”. She said the plan would require substantial time to implement and had not been costed or properly evaluated. Bengu stressed the plan was still “a work in progress”.

South African Post Office CEO Mark Barnes told the court the services agreement with Sassa was in respect of electronic payments and did not include cash payments. Barnes said that in response to a question raised during the media conference, he had said that delivery of cash to paypoints had never been regarded as a core capability of the Post Office.

Barnes and Bengu were responding to an order from the court on Friday requiring them to explain, by close of business on Monday, why it appeared from their media conference that they had a contingency plan for the 2.8-million cash recipients. The media conference was held two days after Sassa requested a six-month extension to the CPS contract to deal with the 2.8-million recipients.

Sassa had told the court there was no contingency plan and there would be chaos if the contract was not extended.

In her latest response to the court, Bengu said that if the court refused the extension it would be possible “to eventually pay the beneficiaries their grants” but not by April 1 and not “without causing panic”.

She said she had applied to the court for an extension in a bid to avoid this.

Bengu said that in December 2017, Sassa had developed a contingency plan to cover the full spectrum of payments. The plan involved taking responsibility for direct deposits into third-party bank accounts. There would also be progressive migration of 5.7-million Sassa/ Grindrod cards to the new Sassa/Post Office special accounts. This was expected to take place over six months and would need the continued support of CPS during that time.

As for the cash payments, the envisaged contingency plan was “to go on an open tender process”, said Bengu. This process was launched in January 2018, less than three months before the CPS contract expired.

Bengu said the purpose of the media conference was to report to the public Sassa’s challenges in making cash payments.