R350 grant payments haunt Sassa, auditor-general dissatisfaction with remedial action to correct matters
THE payment of R350 grants to people who were not entitled to them has come back to haunt the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa), with Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke wanting the entity to implement remedial action.
It came to light in Sassa’s audited financial statements tabled along with the 2021-22 annual report in Parliament recently. In the report, Maluleke said she found irregularities, including R350 grant payments between May 2020 and August last year. Sassa said irregular payments were made to more than 40 000 people, including civil servants.
“The non-compliance is likely to result in a material financial loss for Department of Social Development, on whose behalf the entity administers the grant,” Maluleke said.
Sassa chief executive Busisiwe Memela-Khambula was notified about the irregularities in October last year and was invited to make a written submission on actions to address the matter.
Maluleke said Memela-Khambula initially disagreed regarding non-compliance, arguing that the entity had taken adequate action to prevent payments to ineligible applicants based on the best data available.
Sassa subsequently made a further submission, detailing steps being taken to address the irregularities in May this year. Maluleke said she concluded that appropriate action was not taken and gave Memela-Khambula until January next year to do so.
“Reasonable steps should be taken… These should include verifying the applicants against the latest available databases, maintaining an audit trail of verifications that were performed and cancelling further payments to ineligible beneficiaries,” the A-G said.
Maluleke said appropriate action should be taken to recover the payments made to civil servants. She said legal advice should be obtained on the process to be followed to recover monies paid to ineligible beneficiaries.
Maluleke also found irregularities involving a R74 million payment of social assistance fees to a service provider for services not rendered and an overpayment of R316 million to another service provider.