Sassa allays fears in light of ‘contract termination’
THE SOUTH African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has urged social grant recipients not to panic amid media reports that the SA Post Office (Sapo) is on the verge of terminating its contract to distribute social grants.
The concern about the alleged imminent failure to pay social grants mounted following an extensive report that appeared in City Press newspaper yesterday stating that the Post Office had been operating at a loss since it clinched a deal with Sassa to distribute social grants.
According to the report, the Post Office was losing about R60 million a month to pay security companies that are guarding and delivering cash to various pay points in the country.
The paper reported that the Post Office’s chief information officer, Refilwe Kekana, wrote an internal memorandum to the newly elected board members in which she reportedly said: “The Post Office finds itself in a financial and operational situation that required an urgent and focused turnaround strategy that must be implemented by April 1.
“The Sassa project won by the Post Office has proven to be a loss-making initiative that the Post Office continues to subsidise at its own risk of financial viability, going concern and reckless trading,” Kekana said
Post Office spokesperson Bongani Diako confirmed the contents of the memorandum but said it was an internal matter.
Yesterday Sassa national spokesperson Kgomoco Diseko allayed fears about the possible non-payment of social grants, saying: “It’s not true that the Post Office pays grant beneficiaries.
“Direct transfers are made by Sassa into grant beneficiary accounts monthly, and that hasn’t changed.”
“Their grants can also be alternatively drawn using the national payment system infrastructure such as ATMs.
“Sassa is in continuous discussions with the National Treasury and the Post Office about grant payments.
“Social grant beneficiaries can rest assured that they will be paid their grants as usual every month, and there is no need to panic notwithstanding the hysteria created by recent media reports.
“Grant payments are guaranteed as per the Constitution, and Sassa will stop at nothing to honour its constitutional obligations.”
Sassa’s reaction came after DA MP Bridget Masango vowed that she would write to the chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee on social development, requesting that the committee urgently ask Minister Lindiwe Zulu to look into the situation and report back to Parliament.
“Millions of South Africans are reliant on social grants to sustain themselves and their families. Moreover, many social grant recipients in rural areas have no means of accessing their grants other than through the cash distribution points. If Sapo plans on closing some of these cash distribution points, vulnerable grant recipients could be left in the lurch.
“It is thus imperative that Minister Zulu, as the minister responsible for social development, ascertains from Sassa and Sapo what the extent of Sapo’s financial difficulties are and what impact they are likely to have.”
GAUTENG Premier David Makhura has indicated that the ANC would rather remain on the opposition benches than assist another party take over the City of Tshwane.
This comes as the DA-led metro is also being eyed by the EFF, which indicated that it would collaborate with the ANC to take over after both parties tried to force out mayor Stevens Mokgalapa and the DA’s speaker Katlego Mathebe.
Makhura was delivering the political input in his capacity as provincial party chairperson at the ANC’s cadre assembly in Tshwane yesterday.
Makhura said the ANC would remain the official opposition until the 2021 local government elections if it was not allowed to be the leader of a coalition government.
“The ANC has been playing a very important role as the opposition in Tshwane.
“We have exposed the drastic and dramatic failures of the DA-led administration.
“We have exposed the collapse of governance and administration. We are not desperate as the ANC.
“We are not going to hand over power or use our votes to bring somebody else to power in Tshwane,” he said.
Makhura’s remarks are set to be a huge blow to the EFF’s ambitions to secure the backing of the ANC to dislodge the DA and take over.
He said the party was lobbying other parties to collaborate with the ANC instead.
“If they don’t want to do that, we don’t mind being in opposition benches to continue the fight there.
“We are not going to be at the mercy of the people who will put us in power and think they can use us or who will be in power and think they can use us to achieve their own goal,” Makhura said.
During his address, Makhura however sharply warned that the ANC would continue to fail to transform the country’s socio-economic trajectory if it did not decisively cure itself of internal factionalism and corruption.
Makhura said the ANC, like other liberation movements, would soon destroy itself through factionalism and corruption if it wasted its power and failed to transform the country and the economy as people would only see it as a tool for personal accumulation.
“When you fail to transform society so that it can work for the better... for more in society, you turn to corruption so that it works for you only,” he said.
He said the ANC’s failure to transform the country’s economy, which was still plagued by inequality, was resulting in increased fights over political office in government.
“It is in our objective interest to build an economy that works for all because if that economy works for all, you don’t have to be sitting in branches fighting over who is going to be councillor or who is going to be an MP, which have become the only avenues for some of us when we don’t have adequate skills to be able to make a living,” Makhura said.