Publications
Partners
The department of social development is closer to reaching its goal of creating a new in-house payment system for social grants, according to Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini.
“What we have learnt over the years is that we need to regain or improve the South Africa Social Security Agency’s control over critical functions and strategic processes,” Dlamini told the media in Pretoria today.
In the meanwhile, part of this strategy is by utilising the South African Post Office to facilitate payments to grant holders by March next year.
The contract that the department has with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), which is the company through which social grants have been processed and issued, will be coming to an end and the agency seeks to have direct oversight over the new account of payments.
The contract with CPS was extended by a year in March by the Constitutional Court, after both Sassa and the department failed to find a new another grant payment service provider.
“To address this, the social security agency is in the process of reactivating its paymaster general account with the South African Reserve Bank. To this end, we are in consultation with the National Treasury,” the minister said.
An inter-ministerial committee was appointed in March this year by President Jacob Zuma following the Constitutional Court order for “the minister of social development and the social security agency to submit quarterly reports highlighting the steps being taken to ensure the appointment of a new payment service provider when the current 12 months contract with CPS lapses at the end of this financial year.”
A five-year plan was pointed out in June for the takeover of payments.
Next week the agency will be announcing the role of the Post Office in facilitating and processing almost 11 million payments towards its beneficiaries.
