CPS warns 1.7m grant recipients may not be paid

With the Constitutional Court set to rule tomorrow on whether former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini should pay court costs from her own pocket, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) has warned of a possible disruption of payments to nearly two million grant recipients in September.

“The September payment cycle will be the last month that CPS will provide a payment service at pay points before its contract expires at the end of September,” read the CPS statement.

According to CPS, approximately 800 000 grant recipients with the old Sassa cards have been removed from the CPS pay point file.

“It would appear that the majority of these grant recipients have not been issued with the new Sassa/Sapo payment card.

“CPS will not be able to pay these grant recipients if they arrive at pay points with their old Sassa cards, despite the fact that these cards will continue to remain valid until 2022, as Sassa would presumably have paid their September grants into the Sassa/Sapo accounts that have been opened for them,” CPS warned.

It noted Sassa had instructed CPS to discontinue servicing all cash pay points in Gauteng, Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape as Sapo would take full responsibility for these.

It also warned about 900 000 grant recipients who had elected to receive their grants via an Easy Pay Everywhere bank account would not receive their September grants in these accounts as Sassa had apparently failed to process the paperwork.

Sassa national spokesperson Kgomoco Diseko was unaware of CPS’s statement.

On its website, Sassa urged Gauteng, Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape beneficiaries to “urgently” collect the new gold Sassa card.

“Beneficiaries who still use pay points in September must be issued with the new gold Sassa card to receive their September payments,” Sassa said.