Grants contract in limbo

STALLING: MINISTER CANCELS MEETING ON MATTER AS CRISIS LOOMS

Welfare money will be paid on April 1 despite impasse.

Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini has yet to decide whether to seek an order from the Constitutional Court that would allow Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) to continue paying welfare grants after April 1.

“That decision must come from the minister and the minister has not yet taken a decision,” her spokesperson Lumka Oliphant said yesterday. “But rest assured that grants will be paid on April 1.”

Dlamini, when asked directly, refused to say how she planned to resolve the impasse threatening the continued payment of grants to almost 18 million beneficiaries once the Constitutional Court’s suspension of the invalidity of the contract with CPS expires on March 31.

The ministry was speaking after a meeting of parliament’s portfolio committee on social development was cancelled, the second meeting on the crisis this year to be scrapped. The cancellation notice appeared to lay the blame on Treasury, saying the meeting could not go ahead as the ministry was not available.

However, a letter sent to the committee by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan made it plain the payment of grants was not the responsibility of his department.

“This is the statutory responsibility of my colleague, Minister Dlamini. Therefore the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), the department of social development and the relevant executive authority have the responsibility to account to the committee on this matter.”

He added that National Treasury would nonetheless advise and support the department and Sassa to ensure the payment of grants was managed within “the correct legal and financial framework”.

Insiders and the opposition said the meeting should have gone ahead as Gordhan’s role was purely an advisory one. Oliphant took a different view, saying the whole purpose of the meeting had been to hear from National Treasury on the matter. – ANA