‘Cash trucks possible’ if grants payment talks fail
Social Development head moves to reassure anxious MPs amid negotiations
THE Department of Social Development told parliament yesterday it can pay out social grants using cash trucks if negotiations with the service provider do not pan out. Appearing before parliament’s social development committee to give a weekly update on progress in securing the payment of grants on April 1, department director-general Zane Dangor said that while he did not believe negotiations for a new contract with CPS would be scuppered, there were other ways to pay grants.
Dangor’s report-back was brief as he had been urgently summoned back to Pretoria by President Jacob Zuma.
Negotiations to secure the new contract got under way yesterday and are expected to run until tomorrow.
Dangor said 99% of beneficiaries had bank accounts with Grindrod, CPS’s banking partner, which would allow them to deposit social grant funds.
About 40% of these preferred to get their grants in cash, but they could use the Post Bank and merchants, if necessary.
In remote areas, he said: “We will do what we have done in exceptional cases in the past . . . that is to take cash directly on trucks and pay people.”
This plan is in contrast with a presentation given on Tuesday by social grants agency Sassa to the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), in which the agency admitted it had no plan in place for when the payment contract expires at the end of the month.
MPs on the social development committee took the department to task, saying different information was being given to different committees.
Dangor, however, said Sassa’s statement that there was no plan in place related only to future plans for Sassa to take over the payment of grants itself.
He assured members that negotiations with CPS would stay within the existing budget and address unwanted deductions being made by CPS’s holding company, Net1, from social grants recipients’ accounts for things like insurance and airtime.
The negotiations are being headed by acting chief executive Thamo Mzobe, who has been in the position since Tuesday morning as the chief executive is on sick leave.
The committee heard that Mzobe does not have a background at Social Development or Sassa, and had been deployed from the National Development Agency.
This week, the department and Sassa have sent a series of mixed messages – Minister Bathabile Dlamini yesterday failed to hold a promised media conference addressing the grants issue, and on Tuesday Sassa told Scopa it would not be approaching the Constitutional Court. Just hours later, it approached the court, then promptly withdrew the application again.
Dangor said the application to the Con-Court had not been for permission to extend the current contract, but to notify it of plans to negotiate an entirely new one.
He said the submission was withdrawn to make “supplementary changes”.
Committee members showed reservations about this “state of unreadiness”.
ANC MP Pulane Mogotsi said: “There is -a risk here . . . this back and forward thing.”
ANC MP Sibongile Tsoleli said people needed assurances they would be paid.
“Hope is not a strategy,” she said.