Scopa writes to chief justice

Parliament’s watchdog public accounts committee has written to Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng to ask that it be given insight into the monitoring of grant payment by Cash Paymaster Services for this year and the process of finding a new service provider to play that role thereafter.

“The standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) has written to Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng on issues around the Constitutional Court judgment on the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) in relation to its contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) and the processes of securing a new and valid contract,” the committee said yesterday.

Committee chairman Themba Godi asked Mogoeng for the names and contact details of legal and technical experts who have been appointed to work together with the auditor-general of South Africa as a panel to evaluate the implementation of grants during this 12-month period with the CPS contract.

Godi said in the letter to the chief justice that he was asking so that the committee could, if necessary, invite the panel to brief MPs on its findings.

He added: “Furthermore, I am of the view that it would be useful for us to engage further on the implications of the judgment.”

The Constitutional Court ruled in March that Cash Paymaster Services had a constitutional duty to continue to pay out some 17 million welfare grants every month until the function could be taken over by another entity.

Rights groups took the issue to the highest court after it emerged that Sassa was not ready to take over payment, as per an earlier undertaking to the court, when CPS’s contract was due to expire at the end of that month. – ANA