Shabangu sues Grindrod
SOCIAL Development Minister Susan Shabangu has revealed that she has taken legal action against Grindrod for allegedly “making unlawful deductions” from social grants recipients’ accounts over the years.
Shabangu divulged the news yesterday moments after the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Social Security led by Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma announced that grant recipients would no longer use CPS cards to collect social grants after the end of September.
Shabangu told the media that Grindrod – a JSE-listed company – was responsible for the “deductions of R10” from grant recipients.
These deductions caused a major outcry in the country, which forced civil society organisations such as Black Sash to approach the Constitutional Court, asking it to stop any further deductions from pensioners and child grant recipients.
Yesterday, Shabangu placed the blame squarely at Grindrod’s door, and said her legal action was aimed at recovering the funds.
She said her departmental investigations had shown that CPS, Net1 and Grindrod were the “same companies”, apparently using different trading and marketing tools.
However, Grindrod’s head of retail, Chris Newland, has denied any knowledge of legal action against his company.
In response to the allegations, Newland said that when CPS was initially awarded the tender, Sassa paid R16.44 per grant recipient to CPS, which allowed them to not make any deductions from recipients.
“When Sassa stopped making those payments and the programme continued, R10 was deducted from the recipients and Grindrod only received 50c for its bank facility, and the rest of the amount was paid to CPS for supplying infrastructure support and technology,” Newland said.
Earlier, Communications Minister Nomvula Mokonyane told the media that the government had also taken legal action against some people who were allegedly preventing grant recipients from changing their CPS cards to the new Sassa/SA Post Office (Sapo) gold card.
CPS chief executive Herman Kotze confirmed that there had been problems in the past, but said they had since been resolved.
“When Sapo commenced the card-swap programme, there were isolated instances where CPS did not allow teams claiming to be Sapo officials on the pay sites, as no prior arrangements had been made with CPS to provide the necessary security clearance that would allow unidentified individuals into the pay point environment,” Kotze said.
The inter-ministerial committee announced that the new card was much safer than the CPS card.
Mokonyane further said that the new Sassa gold card was easily identifiable, adding: “It is gold in colour and has the country’s coat of arms on the right-hand side, as well as the letters Sassa inscribed on the left.”