Lecturer in child support grant row

A LECTURER is facing allegations of defrauding South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), by collecting child support grant for her 13-year-old daughter while she earns more than R400 000 a year. These allegations were confirmed by the Provincial SASSA Assistant Communications Manager, Mdumiseni Hadebe, who said the Unizulu lecturer is still registered and is a beneficiary of a child support grant. A source within the institution said it was worrying that a person who earns so much is allowed to draw from the state coffers, which were meant to support needy children. ‘The intention of introducing this grant was to help struggling families to make ends meet for their children. If this person was a teacher or a nurse she should have been stopped and charged for fraud a long time ago,’ said the source. She further explained that the said lecturer obtained her Masters in 2016, and was employed by the institution thereafter. She is lecturing at the Faculty of Economics. ‘The bad thing about this is that the child lives in Nongoma, but she is collecting the money on the other side. I am not insinuating that she is not supporting the child, but all this needs to be investigated,’ she said. Hadebe said if the information supplied by the beneficiary to SASSA materially changes, the beneficiary must as soon as is reasonably possible after the change occurs, inform SASSA thereof. ‘As SASSA we pay money to a person in the belief that he or she is entitled thereto in terms of the Act. SASSA has a right to recover the amounts to which the person was not entitled,’ said Hadebe. When the ZO contacted the lecturer, she said she was no longer collecting the child support grant for her daughter. ‘I stopped this year to collect grant when we were asked to apply for new SASSA cards, I did not renew it, and I am not collecting any grant so far,’ she said.