Grants will be paid, beneficiaries told
Social grant beneficiaries will continue to be paid as usual and on time after April 1 and there will be no disruptions in the grants payment system, the South African Security Agency said on Thursday.
Social grant beneficiaries will continue to be paid as usual and on time after April 1 and there will be no disruptions in the grants payment system, the South African Security Agency (Sassa) said on Thursday.
The statement did not clarify, however, how these payments would be made in the absence of a concrete mechanism.
Sassa said it would present its plans and tackle all uncertainties in a briefing to Parliament’s portfolio committee on social development next Wednesday. The agency insisted beneficiaries had “no need to panic”. It said it had been inundated by concerns of what will happen when the CPS contract expired at the end of March.
Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini established a task team to look into the requirements of the takeover of the grants payment system.
“Consultations were held with various stakeholders in an effort to determine what the best model would be and a solution had to be found in order to minimise potential unintended consequences. That process took an unexpected [ly] longer time given the competing business and other interests of interested parties,” Sassa spokesman Paseka Letsatsi said.
“We are currently finalising consultations with the Reserve Bank and the Treasury. Given the nature of the essential service Sassa provides, there is a need for an efficient and tested solution as well as a matching, sizeable human and material investment.
“These are some of the realities Sassa is facing, which will be detailed when Sassa goes public on the whole matter next week,” he said.
The agency is due to take over the payment of social grants from Net1 subsidiary Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) as from April 1, but concerns have been raised about its state of readiness to do so. There are suspicions that Sassa will only be able to continue paying grants if it extends the contract with CPS, which the Constitutional Court has declared invalid.
The lack of readiness of the agency was made apparent in December, when the Department of Social Development and Sassa officials briefed Parliament’s social development committee. At that stage, it was still considering model options and had not yet appointed service providers to deliver various aspects of the system.
Sassa has also not yet submitted a report to the Constitutional Court as to why it failed to meet the deadlines stipulated by the court in preparing for the takeover of social grants payments. Letsatsi said that the agency was “finalising the plan and once we are done, we will approach the court. We do not have a date so far.”