Union threat to Sassa over biometric system
• Nehawu says its members are not paid to enrol grants beneficiaries after agency imposed it
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) intends to apply for a court interdict barring the use of a biometric system to enrol SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) beneficiaries.
This follows Nehawu’s announcement that it will go on strike at the agency on Wednesday over Sassa’s unilateral implementation of the new system, which the union said was detrimental to the country’s 17-million grant recipients.
Sassa is mandated to provide comprehensive social security services in the form of social relief and grants to vulnerable and poor South Africans.
Nehawu said that the agency and the social development department had failed to engage extensively on the functions of workers during the migration to and the use of the biometric enrolment and payment of beneficiaries.
Sassa’s payment system has undergone a transition since the Constitutional Court declared its contract with Cash Paymaster Services invalid while allowing it to continue with payments until March. Following the government’s intervention, the SA Post Office was awarded the contract to distribute grants.
However, the transition has not been without hiccups. In July, almost 700,000 beneficiaries did not receive grants due to problems in the new electronic system. Nehawu general secretary Zola Saphetha said the strike came after negotiations with Sassa failed to resolve the issues encountered by workers while using the system.
“Biometric enrolment is not part of the job description of workers, hence workers don’t get remunerated for performing it, nor is it part of the Sassa grant administration business process. In rural areas, there is a huge shortage of the biometric enrolment equipment, leading to delays in the servicing of beneficiaries,” Saphetha said.
Sassa could not be reached for comment on Monday.
The union also said the new social pension system (Socpen) had been misrepresented to workers who were under the impression it was meant to improve the security of social pensions after they found it was susceptible to fraud.
The system as presented to workers was meant to protect them from Socpen fraud. Any other Sassa-related systems that workers operated under had to date failed dismally to yield the desired results.
“Workers continue to access Socpen the very same way they did before and it is still a very vulnerable system to fraud and hackers,” Saphetha said on Monday.
The strike by Nehawu members is the second protest action by Sassa employees in 2018.
In July, members of the Public Servants Association at Sassa downed tools after wage negotiations collapsed.
The matter was eventually settled in the Labour Court.