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Dangor hauled before the presidency as MPs fume over grants crisis

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Director-general of the department of social development, Zane Dangor said they will give people cash as their last resort.Picture: Lindile Mbontsi
Director-general of the department of social development, Zane Dangor said they will give people cash as their last resort.Picture: Lindile Mbontsi

The presidency has summoned the director-general of social development, Zane Dangor, to account for the impending crisis around the payment of social grants. However, Dangor was not sure whether he was summoned to a meeting with President Jacob Zuma or with the presidency’s director-general, Cassius Lubisi.

Dangor told City Press that he received a call on Wednesday while attending a portfolio committee meeting in Parliament, asking him to get to the presidency “to talk about the withdrawal from court, and what was happening with our court papers”. The South Africa Social Security Agency filed papers with the Constitutional Court on Tuesday afternoon but withdrew them yesterday morning.

The meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, according to Dangor. He had an extremely difficult time trying to convince MPs about the government’s plan to pay out social welfare grants from April 1.

MPs who sit in the social development committee, which overseas the social security agency and the department of social development, were especially peeved because they were told time and again that there was a plan to pay the grants come April 1.

MPs from across the party spectrum spoke about how the department and the agency misled then into believing there was a plan; and only for social security agency officials to tell the powerful public accounts committee (Scopa) on Tuesday that they did not have a plan. MPs protested that they may have been lied to and that their integrity was undermined.

“The other thing that is very disturbing for us; we were in a portfolio committee meeting, but looking at the presentations given to us as a committee that deals with the social security agency almost every week, from what was presented in Scopa, it feels justice was not done for us as this portfolio committee,” said the ANC’s Sibongile Tsoleli. She said she was hearing some of the issues that were presented to Scopa for the first time.

“I am not happy as a member of this portfolio committee. I feel that there is information on which we were not taken on board.

“I don’t know when they realised the extent of the damage they are doing, also to our reputations because it seem as if we are not doing what we are supposed to do – the oversight,” she added.

Tsoleli wondered whether the plan presented to them last week was ever a plan in light of the social security agency officials telling Scopa there was no plan.

MPs also criticised the appointment of an official from another entity to act as head of the social security agency in the absence of the chief executive, who was booked off sick this week.

“It’s irresponsible that a new person who is not from the social security agency has been appointed to act. Where are the DDGs [deputy director-generals],” asked one ANC MP.

Dangor said what was presented to Scopa in terms of lack of a plan was the ability of the social security agency to be the paymaster. “We know that we can’t be a paymaster,” he said.

“We needed to state that the kind of issues that the social security agency is exploring were exactly whether we go long term and do the open architecture route and with its pros and cons or we go the bank route with its pros and cons. That is the issue that we as the technical team are discussing at this stage.”

Dangor said the most practical thing was to go with the current service provider and negotiations were around sticking with the existing budget and dealing with issues of deductions.

“If all else fails, we do know that 99% of the current beneficiaries have bank accounts with Grindrod. We have a strategy we will use that leverage to pay through the banks,” said Dangor. 

Grindrod is CPS's banking partner. 

Dangor said there were also people who, through their the social security agency card, could access cash – 40% of the people, he said.

“Those who are in the most remote areas, we would do what we have done in exceptional cases in the past – it’s risky but it has been done before – to take cash directly on trucks and pay people, obviously using safety systems.”

Dangor said that option would be deployed when all else failed “but we do not foresee that happening”.


Andisiwe Makinana
Parliamentary journalist
City Press
p:+27 11 713 9001
w:www.citypress.co.za  e: Andisiwe.Makinana@citypress.co.za
      
 
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