‘Dispute’ over grants distribution

Minister, Sassa CEO at odds over time

South Africa Social Security Agency (Sassa) chief executive Thokozani Magwaza is adamant that Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) will be phased out next year.

Magwaza also believes that an organisation will be appointed to take over from CPS in April. This while Sassa prepares to take over and do the grants payments itself.

But Minister of Social Development Bathabile Dlamini said the process could cost billions and take years.

“... we have been looking into the budget and we have agreed together that it is not going to take 12 months to bring the whole programme into its totality,” Dlamini said during a briefing to the portfolio committee on social development on the state of readiness to comply with the Constitutional Court ruling in implementing all the requirements within the stipulated time.

“This is going to be a five-year process and the estimation that we have right now is plus minus R6-billion ... There is expertise that is not there at Sassa. You need people who have full understanding because we don’t want to compromise the process in terms of implementation.”

She said Sassa did not have employees with expertise including in biometrics, banking, payment, costing and cyber risk assessment. But Magwaza said the court had given them 12 months to act and that is what was going to happen.

“On the issue of the five-year plan, we’ve got 12 months that we have been ordered [by the Con Court] to use to phase out CPS. There is no doubt about it.

“We have not been asked, we have been told to do that,” Magwaza said.

He said there was enough time to start the process of ensuring that CPS was phased out.

“Come 2018, we will be having an organisation or it will be something that we will be doing inside that is going [to] take us to the time that we are ready to capacitate ourselves,” Magwaza added.

The committee said it was happy with progress and will “monitor closely progress towards the next April 1 date so that there is no repeat of what happened during this time”.

We have not been asked, we’ve been told to do that Thokozani Magwaza SASSA CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER