Share

Sassa has ‘full handle’ on grants payments, CEO tells Parliament

accreditation
 South African Social Security Agency acting chief executive Abraham Mahlangu speaks with portfolio committee chairperson on social development, Zoleka Capa, over the phone in Parliament.
South African Social Security Agency acting chief executive Abraham Mahlangu speaks with portfolio committee chairperson on social development, Zoleka Capa, over the phone in Parliament.

The Social Security Agency has “full handle on the matter” of social grants payments, despite a technical glitch that saw thousands of recipients not receiving their money, and the “issues about the system performance has improved drastically”.

Abraham Mahlangu, the acting chief executive of the South African Social Security Agency, updated the portfolio committee on social development on Wednesday on how the agency was dealing with the latest social grant payment crisis.

He addressed Parliament over the phone after not being able to attend the meeting in person.

The agency had has its hands full this week, trying to avert a wage strike by workers and solve the problems caused by a change in the payment system – which resulted in thousands of social grant beneficiaries being unable to access their money.

Read: Grants will be paid, says Sassa, as it tries to stop workers’ strike

Zoleka Capa, the portfolio committee chairperson, conducted the call over a loud speaker for Mahlangu to address the rest of the meeting.

Mahlangu apologised and attributed his absence from Parliament to the system glitches relating to the payments of social grants that he said began at midnight on June 30.

Capa said it was important for the chief executive, as the recognised accounting officer, to address the meeting himself.

“In terms of our own law and discipline and accountability rules, the accountability is done by the accounting officer, they don’t delegate,” she told those who attended the meeting.

Capa said she understood that the agency faced a crisis but the lack of attendance of either the chief executive or the chief operations officer could not be allowed.

Mahlangu told the portfolio committee that one of the causes of the system failure was a high increase of post office account profiles from about 233 000 to 930 000 accounts, which strained the system.

“When we started opening [the] payment cycle we experienced some technical glitches on the number of people trying to access their social grants using the new Sassa card,” he said.

The Social Security Agency was in the process of phasing out Cash Paymaster Services, as directed by the Constitutional Court, and introducing the Post Office to pay social grants

The old white Sassa card issued by Cash Paymaster Services would be fully phased out by September 30, and had been replaced by a new, gold card issued by the Post Office’s PostBank.

“There were about three areas of concern that people were worried about. One was that the system was timing out after a certain number of minutes, then when that was diagnosed we found that the newly acquired system, the IGPS, was experiencing strain because of multiple attempts to access by the beneficiaries,” said Mahlangu.

He added that another issue was the over-the-counter limit that didn’t allow the beneficiaries to receive their full grants. He said this had since been resolved.

Mahlangu assured the portfolio committee that the agency had “full handle on the matter”.

“The issues about the system performance have improved drastically, I am monitoring the system on an hourly basis nationally, I am taking a roll call feedback from Sapo [South African Post Office] and also from our own regional management teams, which are on the ground looking at the progress made since the system improvement started at the end of business last night,” he said.

He added that they had been getting positive reports that the beneficiaries were receiving their grants and that there won’t be a need to activate any “relief measures”.

In an interview with the SABC on Wednesday morning, Mahlangu said that if the issue persisted they would have activated relief measures in the form of food vouchers.

But later he told the portfolio committee: “The technical glitch is being really attended to and our beneficiaries are getting their dues.”

Capa was satisfied with Mahlangu’s report but she said it was not enough for the agency and related entities to only address the media but commended the agency for their attempts to reach the masses.

“It is important that government as a whole has got the same understanding and assuring everyone wherever they are that nothing is going to happen to their grant, and that their grant can’t be postponed for next month, they have to get it due to them this week,” she said.

She conceded that having someone address Parliament was not the conventional way of doing things but was understanding of the conditions.

“It was also good because they were monitoring the situation on an hourly basis, something they could not have done if they had flown to Cape Town,” she said.

Capa pleaded with Mahlangu about adequate training for staff responsible for carrying out services to grant beneficiaries.

“Please CEO, the staff that is dealing with the beneficiaries directly, whether it’s the post office, whether it’s a Sassa office, they must be kind to our people. They must not get irritated with many questions because our people are anxious ... we need training, we need reorientation, we need to ensure that they are dealing with vulnerable people – we don’t want a riot in this country,” she said.

The portfolio committee also heard that there had been issues of poor communication on the ground, long queues, stampedes in post offices, the staff unable to cope with large numbers of people and the unavailability of enough cash in most areas.

“As a portfolio committee indeed we are not making the minister account, we know who is the implementer and we will always be taking our fight to your doorstep,” said Capa.

We live in a world where facts and fiction get blurred
Who we choose to trust can have a profound impact on our lives. Join thousands of devoted South Africans who look to News24 to bring them news they can trust every day. As we celebrate 25 years, become a News24 subscriber as we strive to keep you informed, inspired and empowered.
Join News24 today
heading
description
username
Show Comments ()
Voting Booth
Do you believe that the various planned marches against load shedding will prompt government to bring solutions and resolve the power crisis?
Please select an option Oops! Something went wrong, please try again later.
Results
Yes
21% - 103 votes
No
79% - 395 votes
Vote