SASSA BILLIONS RECLAIMED FROM CIVIL SERVANTS

THE Department of Social Development is set to scrutinise nearly 100 000 civil servants after they were found to be among thousands of officials that benefited from social grants last year.

This emerged after 66 480 reviews were conducted on the grants civil servants received and R12.6 million recovered since the department revealed that 177 801 civil servants received social grants, including 11 589 recipients of child foster grants as at July 2021.

Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu was asked about the number of public servants found to have qualified for the grants that they received, and those that did not qualify.

She was also asked about the amount of money recovered from the culprits and the disciplinary action taken against them.

In her two separate replies, Zulu said payment of the identified grants was suspended on September 10, 2021, only to be reinstated after discovering that many of the suspended grants were received by interns and contract workers, who may qualify to continue receiving these grants.

“The reinstatement was done in order to afford the review process to be done according to the prescripts of the Regulations to the Social Assistance Act, 2004,” she said.

According to Zulu, the civil servants whose grants were reinstated were sent notices that a review of their social grants would be conducted.

She said 165 297 public servants were found to have received social grants, instead of the 177 801 that were initially reported.

“These were suspended in September 2021, because it was suspected they did not qualify for the grant they had been receiving.

“All 165 297 cases were then subjected to a full review process as required in terms of the Social Assistance Act,” she said.

Progress was at various stages in the review of the grants received by the public servants, with dozens of thousands still to be subjected to scrutiny, she said.

“The grant review process is not yet finalised and 98 817 beneficiaries are still to be reviewed,” she said.

Zulu said of those reviewed, 63 212 have been found to qualify for the grants and 3 268 others did not qualify.

She revealed that R12.6m had been recovered from public servants who have been found not to qualify for the grant that they received. Zulu said disciplinary action ought to be meted out against the guilty officials.

The implicated public servants have completed debt acknowledgement forms to enable Sassa to recover the debt.

“This information has been shared with each province and affected government departments for them to be able to take appropriate action,” she said.

“To date, Sassa has not received any reports of the outcomes of these processes.”

DA MP Mimmy Gondwe said her party sent a fresh set of parliamentary questions to Zulu and acting Public Service and Administration Minister Thulas Nxesi requesting the names and other details of the 3 268 public servants that received social grants they were not entitled to in order to lodge criminal complaints against them.

“Failure to enforce consequence management on this glaring abuse of taxpayer money will only serve to entrench and perpetuate a culture of corruption in the public service,” Gondwe said.

But Zulu said Sassa was implementing various measures to prevent people ineligible for a social grant being able to receive the grants. It is engaging Public Works to establish a data sharing mechanism.