Daily Dispatch Dlamini must be fired now
WHAT exactly is going on at the Department of Social Development and its agency SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) with regard to social grant payouts?
As predicted by many pundits, Sassa gave notice to the Constitutional Court on Tuesday of its intention to urgently apply for the extension by another year of the illicit contract with Cash Paymaster Services to pay out social grants.
In the court papers and in an appearance before parliament this week, Sassa made the widely anticipated case that it does not have the capacity to disburse the grants from April 1.
If it was left to perform this function, then the 17 million grant recipients would suffer more hardship than they already do – Sassa had no banks on board, no cards and no system in place.
When the ConCourt declared the CPS contract irregular and invalid in 2014, Sassa was given a three-year grace period to get its house in order and implement its stated plan to develop the capacity to pay out grants.
What emerged from Sassa this week was an image of an agency that has, over three years, done absolutely nothing to ensure it does not remain reliant on CPS to pay out its grants.
Yesterday afternoon however, Zane Dangor, the director-general of the very same department, appeared before parliament’s social development committee and sang a completely different song.
For one thing, he told parliament the claim of there being no plan in place related only to “future plans” for Sassa to take over the payment of grants itself.
Dangor was speaking just as negotiations to reactivate the illegal contract – at a hiked fee – had started. These are expected to run until tomorrow.
Dangor said he did not think the negotiations for the new contract with CPS would be “scuppered”, but if this did happen there were other ways to pay grants.
One option would be for social development to pay grants using cash trucks.
But then this would not, for the large part, be necessary Dangor said, because 99% of beneficiaries had bank accounts with Grindrod, CPS’s banking partner.
While about 40% of these preferred to get their grants in cash, they could use the Post Bank and merchants if necessary.
This makes it very difficult to understand the earlier rejection by Minister Bathabile Dlamini of Treasury’s directive to Sassa to use the banks to effect grant payouts.
If there is not, in fact, a self-engineered crisis, it would seem that every effort has been made to create the illusion of one.
Either way, the minister has been less than forthcoming – she has deliberately snubbed parliamentary oversight, not once but twice. She has also been obstructive in the effort to come up with a rescue plan.
In this utter debacle the wellbeing of 17 million of our most vulnerable citizens has been put at risk.
If anything is clear it is that Dlamini must be fired immediately. If she is not, the only possible conclusion is that she is acting with the blessing of her principals.