‘Post Office can do better’

Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele yesterday urged SA Post Office (Sapo) branch managers to pull up their socks and install the required infrastructure in preparation for the payment of social grants to millions of beneficiaries.

Cwele was visiting the Pan Africa Mall Sapo in Alexandra to get a first-hand experience of the payments of social grants and obtain feedback to ensure appropriate payments plans.

A joint announcement by Cwele and Social Development Minister Susan Shabangu on Friday said Sapo and the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) would be ready to take over the social grants payments from Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) on September 30, and that the CPS contract will not be renewed.

Cwele was probably not ready for the chaos and a raft of challenges he encountered as the Alexandra Sapo branch seemed ill-equipped and not prepared to pay social grants to hundreds of recipients. However, he insisted Sapo would be up to the task.

The Pan Africa Mall branch had only two working computers out of four; didn’t have chairs or benches, forcing the elderly and the sick to stand in long queues; and opened at 8.30am while grants recipients started queuing outside at 7am.

But grant recipients got paid, albeit at a steady pace.

Cwele said: “At Post Office, we say they must make more contingencies because if the machines at the banks do not work, people flock here and they must still be paid. So it is still the management issue for local managers to ensure they liaise with Sassa.

“Those are the things that we hope that as the system matures, we will find better ways.

“We are confident that we will be able to take over from CPS come October 1.

“What we have said is that in the next payment, they must convert this office because we don’t need offices, we need more paypoints.

“This is a busy area. We are getting a network guy to try and repair the computers.”

Grants recipient Thandi Mbatha said it was her first time collecting her disability grant at Pan Africa Mall and she was irritated that there were no chairs. At least 20 plastic chairs were brought in later when the elderly started complaining that they could collapse at any moment.

“At my previous pay point, we used to have chairs to sit down while we were queuing,” she said.

“I’m also afraid that they will deduct money from me as they deducted R25 last month.

“They never tell us what these deductions are for. They used to tell us that they were keeping the money for us, but come December we would get nothing.”

Cwele urged the grants recipients to migrate to the new social grants payment cards and use the SA Post Office in order to avoid illegal deductions. – ANA