Sassa’s next baptism of fire happens today
THE SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) says: “We are working flat out in partnership with SA Post Office (Sapo), Telkom, the Reserve Bank, BankServ, Visa, the National Payments Association and others. This is a national project and we are united in our commitment to ensuring that social grants are available to every recipient everywhere, on time, every time. That requires Sapo to strengthen its own capacity as our grant payment partner, to achieve that. As a crucial starting point, a legal process is under way to have social grants classified as an Essential Service, to prevent strike action from interfering with payments.”
ANEW SENSE of optimism is blowing across South Africa, fuelled by a change in leadership and July’s timely reminder to live by the values of Nelson Mandela. It’s blown into the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) too, the agency responsible for paying grants to our most vulnerable citizens.
We are a caring government, but along the way our ability to care and to show accountability and transparency has been eroded. We are working to correct those wrongs, and working equally hard to resolve the technical wrongs that have damaged our quality of service.
Reports in the media have highlighted the clash with our former service provider, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS). Litigation is ongoing, but the axing of that relationship was crucial to allow us to bring all grant payment processes and technologies in-house, under the government’s control.
Never again should the payment of social grants be outsourced to a third party. The state must be responsible for caring for its citizens, with the direct spin-offs of a better service and huge cost savings.
The processes and infrastructure required to deliver social grants to recipients nationwide must be infallible, fast and reliable. That has not always been the case, but it will be in the future.
As part of this, beneficiaries who receive their grants in cash, rather than into a bank account, are migrating from an old card to a new, smarter card issued through the SA Post Office (Sapo). The old cards had become a vehicle for fraud, allowing beneficiaries to be scammed by unapproved fees or unauthorised deductions for insurance policies, electricity and airtime. The new card prohibits any debits except for legitimate deductions, and old cards will no longer be valid after September 30 this year.
The new cards have other benefits besides security. They can store money and be swiped to make purchases in shops, and used to withdraw cash as the month progresses from participating merchants such as Shoprite or Sapo. That’s safer for our beneficiaries than carrying cash.
Moreover, keeping data about each beneficiary out of the hands of third parties protects them from exploitation. Now nobody can illegally sell that personal data to commercial entities such as marketers, which happened in the past.
Sassa pays 17.68 million benefits to 12.6 million people, and only a small portion of those elect to receive their grants in cash.
Of those, 730 000 had upgraded to new cards when changes to the system came into effect on July 1.
Switching from one technology to another always brings challenges, and as the volume of transactions rose, Sassa was not immunised from such challenges. The main cause was a weak link between Bankserv (the payment clearing house) and the Sapo system that could not handle huge volumes of transactions. That link has been strengthened to cope with up to 15 million transactions simultaneously – more than the current system will ever require. To resolve such issues, we have worked flat out in partnership with Sapo, Telkom, the Reserve Bank, BankServ, Visa, the National Payments Association and others.
This is a national project and we are united in our commitment to ensuring that social grants are available to every recipient everywhere, on time, every time. That requires the Post Office to strengthen its own capacity as our grant payment partner, and we are collaborating with Sapo to achieve that.
As a crucial starting point, a legal process is under way to have social grants classified as an essential service, to prevent strike action from interfering with payments.
The new opportunity that comes with this national responsibility, however, is reinvigorating the Post Office and giving it renewed validity in today’s world, creating a brighter future, job security and better working conditions for its staff.
Sassa will work with the Post Office to examine its physical footprint and expand its presence where necessary. In deep rural areas, that could see mobile Sapo vehicles make regular visits.
We will also help to overhaul Sapo’s technology and physical infrastructure. A budget of R541 million has been earmarked for Sapo’s remodelling and upgrading.