Sanco, Contralesa offer help in paypoint crisis
Rural and township leaders have stepped in regarding the chaos at post office paypoints, where they say people are being forced to wait in inhumane conditions.
Contralesa and Sanco issued statements on the problem as president Cyril Ramaphosa warned that the Eastern Cape was at the forefront of the second surge of Covid-19 infections.
The organisations said they would step in to try and help reduce long and uncontrollable queues, which they said were signs of worsening poverty during the pandemic.
Social grants and Covid-19 relief grants are paid out at the post office. Contralesa and Sanco’s mass membership consists mostly of grant beneficiaries.
The organisations said it was unacceptable that people had to stand for hours in long, winding queues, often spending cold nights crowded together on pavements, putting themselves at risk of infection, just to get their grants.
They have launched a campaign to raise awareness of how to best and safely access grants, and avoid long queues.
Sanco chair Dr Mike Basopu and Contralesa provincial chair Nkosi Mwelo Nonkonyana chaired a virtual meeting on the issue on Wednesday.
Sanco provincial secretary Tony Duba and Contralesa provincial secretary Nkosi Mkhanyiseli Dudumayo called the queues inhumane ”.
Dudumanyo said: The long, never-ending, meandering queues found at SA Post Office [Sapo] paypoints across the province made us dig a little deeper into the reasons. We agreed that we were not “going to engage on a blamegame exercise, but to highlight the challenges and bring them to the attention of the leadership of Sapo, and to jointly explore diverse avenues.”
Duba said the two organisations were deeply concerned about the desperation of people waiting for grants.
Many were trying to protect their families from the devastating and lasting effects of the pangs of hunger and the dejection that often accompanies this state of poverty ”, he said.
Contralesa and Sanco resolved to:
● Help out at the queues;
● Recruit volunteers for this task;
● Raise public awareness among beneficiaries on the most efficient way of getting their grants; and
● Remind Sapo employees about the principles of Batho Pele , and to be humane in their handling of grant seekers.
Dudumayo said many beneficiaries spent money they could not afford on transport to get to paypoints, only to discover their grants could not be paid because Sapo’s systems were down or the money had run out.
He said this needed to be addressed urgently.
He said Sanco and Contralesa would talk to senior managers from Sassa and Sapo about the issues, especially about getting them to reopen closed pay points in rural areas that were under traditional leadership.