The challenges Sassa faces with payments are due to the fact that there are as many as 18 million Sassa social grant beneficiaries including children, the elderly, war veterans and those who are disabled.
This vast network of grant recipients can mean that not all beneficiaries receive their grant payments on time, something that has been noted and questioned by DA cabinet official, Bridget Masango.
According to Masango, there is proof that the disbursement of Sassa social grants has encountered issues in each month since January 2020.
However, Social Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu maintains that there have been no such payment issues dating back to that period, aside from incidents of duplicate payments that happened in May 2020 in the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal, adding that the issue has since been resolved
It’s important to note that social grants are deemed to be paid once SASSA transfers the money into beneficiary’s accounts. The above-mentioned error was rectified, and beneficiaries were paid later during the expected payment date and any overpayments were fully recovered.
The agency also currently pays out the Social Relief of Distress grant to approximately 8 million struggling people throughout the country. Zulu admitted that although there have been technical issues with paying out the R350 grant in the past, these too have since been rectified.
Challenges with paying out the R350 grant were mostly due to Sassa’s third party verification process, which is strongly dependent on dependent on applicants providing correct details. Similar difficulties were encountered with recipients who collect the grant using other collection methods such as cash send who then asked to change to another alternative way of collect
Meanwhile, roughly 500,000 Post Bank account holders could not receive their R350 grant and encountered payment delays because many of those affected were not FICA compliant. This, according to the Minister was mostly an issue during the first cycle of the grant.
Zulu concluded that beneficiaries must take action if there are any past-due payments. A specific day for when all clients will be paid cannot be specified.
After the client has corrected their payment method and the agency has verified it, Sassa will then be able to pay the affected beneficiaries.
