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Grants crisis: Cabinet steps into the fray, but only from next week

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Jeff Radebe, Minister for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. (Photo: GCIS)
Jeff Radebe, Minister for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. (Photo: GCIS)

Time is running out for a social grants solution – the contract with current grants payment company CPS ends at the end of the month.

The social development department has come under pressure to not renew the contract, which was ruled invalid by the Constitutional Court, but has been dragging its feet on finding a solution that will ensure that 17 million people will receive their grants come April 1.

Cabinet has finally decided to step in – next week.

Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe said the pending social grants crisis “will be discussed” with all affected parties next week.

“Cabinet decided we will have full time next week to get a comprehensive report from all teams, not just social development, but also National Treasury, and all affected parties,” he told journalists at a briefing following a Cabinet meeting. It would be held in Cape Town at a date still to be determined.

“All of us are as concerned as everybody else, as the deputy president highlighted yesterday in Parliament. As a government we are deeply and totally committed that come April 1, 17 million people must be given their social grants,” he said.

Cabinet would only say what its position on the matter is after the meeting.

Meanwhile, Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini has been summoned to appear before Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa).

Dlamini did not appear at the scheduled Scopa meeting on Tuesday along with representatives from her department and the social security agency. She also was not present at a portfolio committee on social development meeting on the same issue on Wednesday.

She will appear at 9am on Tuesday.

DA MP Bridget Masango, who sits on the portfolio committee of social development, said if Dlamini fails to accept the invitation, she will “once again prove that the ANC does not care about the poor and vulnerable in our society”.

Masango tore into Dlamini yesterday, saying that “Minister Dlamini has allowed for this situation to reach crisis point”.

She called on President Jacob Zuma to appoint the national treasury to take the lead role in the negotiations for a new service provider, in order to ensure that “this process is cost effective and transparent”. – News24

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