Our conduct ethical — CPS

Cash Payment Services (CPS) says its conduct in relation to its handling of the contract with the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) for the payment of grants has been completely ethical.

CPS director Serge Belamant filed on Tuesday an answering affidavit in the Black Sash’s urgent Constitutional Court application, stating that his company supported it, but sought to clear its name.

The advocacy group wants the court’s oversight role over Sassa and its new contract with CPS to administer grants, reinstated. The matter is likely to be heard on March 16.

Black Sash also wants the court to ensure beneficiaries receive their grants from April 1 and that the integrity of the social grant system is protected.

It asked the court to protect grant beneficiaries from “harmful practices by, amongst others, CPS”.

Belamant, in his affidavit, said CPS wanted to avoid litigation, in respect of the envisaged contract to be concluded with Sassa. “It is anxious to avoid becoming embroiled in further protracted and costly legal battles as a result of irregularities that are entirely of Sassa’s making,” he said.

“Regardless of its innocence, CPS’s reputation is inevitably compromised when it is required to conduct business under contracts that have been declared invalid — or indeed, which are concluded in circumstances that require deviations from prescribed procurement.”

Belamant said CPS readily accepted that it was under a duty to act reasonably and with due regard to its constitutional obligations in negotiating and contracting with Sassa.

The CPS director disputed Black Sash’s suggestion that CPS was holding Sassa or the state to

ransom. “CPS has no control over the process, cannot be blamed for the fact that there were no responsive bidders to Sassa’s latest tender and has offered to assist Sassa in its endeavour to take over the payment of social grants.”

Belamant provided the court with a string of correspondence between CPS and Sassa, saying his company had written to the agency in May 2016, expressing its concern over the short time period remaining for a phaseout strategy and proposing alternative solutions.

In December, because of a lack of communication from Sassa, CPS wrote to the agency again about the transition process and informed it that the company would start “dismantling” its payment infrastructure on January 1 2017.

Sassa wrote to CPS on February 10, calling for a meeting to “explore the possibilities to avail the company’s services as interim arrangement … for the period extending from March 31 2017”.

Dates for meetings were proposed, but CPS and Sassa met for the first time to discuss an interim agreement on March 1.

Belamant said CPS had engaged with Sassa out of necessity, pointing out that CPS had decided not to bid for a new tender with the agency in 2015 when the process was reopened and planned to terminate its services as soon as the new service provider had taken over.

“Black Sash has made a number of aspersions on CPS, which are uncalled for and irrelevant.” He said Black Sash’s aspersion that CPS had shared beneficiary data with third parties and that Net1 subsidiaries had access to Sassa-branded bank accounts were also untrue.

The National Consumer Tribunal and the Competition Commission had investigated these claims and had “rejected them as unfounded”.

Black Sash wanted the court to order that personal information of beneficiaries was the property of Sassa.

Freedom Under Law applied on Tuesday to intervene in Black Sash’s application, saying that it supported the relief sought by the organisation.

It also proposed that the court order the disclosure of all documentation relating to the interim contracting between Sassa and CPS.