Each month, millions of the country's most vulnerable stand in long queues to access the financial relief that they desperately depend on. However, serious service issues at Postbank and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) itself, have resulted in many not being able to access these grants.
Lindiwe Zulu, the Minister of Social Development, was contacted on Tuesday in hopes that she would provide some answers about the current challenges plaguing Sassa. While she admitted that these challenges need attention, she believes that Sassa has not provided her with enough information regarding their situation and wants to give the entity time to prepare in order to provide proper feedback at a later engagement.
These are some of the current challenges preventing beneficiaries from accessing financial support:
- Beneficiaries are unable to contact Sassa via its call centres, WhatsApp or email services. Sassa is mainly working online, but its beneficiaries are from low-income households, many without internet access.
- Many beneficiaries report being kicked-off the system before being able to complete their application.
- Due to loadshedding and the Sassa system often being offline, people are sent away and told to come back another day. Many beneficiaries do not have the means to travel back and forth.
- Long queues at Sassa offices
- The Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant processing portal does not work correctly.
- Beneficiaries are often paid in lump-sums and not monthly. This creates issues when they need to re-apply and are told that their income exceeds the threshold.
- There have been many complaints that Sassa medical doctors are ineffective.
- Postbank has been experiencing many system glitches.
- Sassa takes a long time to respond to questions.
These issues need to be addressed with urgency, as millions of South Africans can no longer live without these critical financial grants.
The next scheduled grant payment is scheduled to take place from 3 February.
