In 2022, the contractual agreement between the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) and the South African Post Office came to its end.
This comes the after the Post Office experienced payment challenges, and the entity had apologised for inconveniencing the millions of social grant clients that were negatively impacted by this.
Social grant clients were advised to use alternative payment channels to make withdrawals as an interim plan, whilst Sassa replaced the Post office with the Postbank, an entity that promised to resolve issues of this nature.
The bank has since assured clients that it is getting on top of information technology challenges that have resulted in unpaid social grant payments in recent months.
The Department of Social Development in the Western Cape has confirmed that it is currently swamped with complaints, including the non-payment of grants.
In an interview, Provincial Social Development Minister Sharna Fernandez, said:
Sassa needs to revisit its system because of the chaos that exists in its regional offices which is simply unacceptable.
Some of the beneficiaries have shared that they sleep overnight at these offices, so that they are able to receive assistance on time and prevent going home without receiving help from the officials. Fernandez said this certainly does lend itself to dignity and well-being, the most vulnerable are impacted by this.
It is for this reason that there are calls for an urgent intervention by the national Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu.
According to Sassa, the rolling blackouts are to blame for further delays as applications need to be filled in manually.
Postbank is at the centre of these complaints as the new entity that disburses social grants, and it unfortunately had cyber security issues during the December 2022 payment cycle but Sassa has confirmed that these issues have been resolved.
