Social grant recipients queue in Athlone today. Photo: Barbara Maregele
4 April 2017
Social grant recipients at pay points in Athlone and Mitchells Plain expressed relief on Tuesday as their grants were paid following last month’s crisis at the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA). But several said they were still the victims of unauthorised deductions from their grants.
Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) signed a new deal with SASSA last Friday, as its five-year contract came to an end on 31 March. Following SASSA’s failure to take over the payment of grants itself as planned, the Constitutional Court ruled on 17 March that CPS should continue paying grants for another year.
In a statement on Tuesday, CPS said the bank accounts of all 10.6 million grant recipients had been credited on 31 March with their April 2017 grants. “As at the close of business on 3 April, 2017, 6.8 million of these recipients had already accessed their grants via the National Payment System or pay points, with a total aggregate value of approximately R7.8 billion processed,” CPS said.
GroundUp visited pay points in Athlone and Mitchells Plain on Tuesday. Many beneficiaries said that while they were relieved that the payment of grants was uninterrupted, they were still left with unanswered questions about deductions from their grants.
At 8am on Tuesday, the line outside the SASSA office in Athlone was already snaking around the building, with people queuing outside in the rain. Most of the beneficiaries were in line to collect or apply for disability grants of R1,600.
Nawaal Jacobs, 55, of Hanover Park who was standing near the front of the line, said she had been there since 6am. Jacobs said she was concerned that her grant would not be paid this month because of “what was happening in the news”. She said her husband was a pensioner and her household relied on his grant to pay for food, rates and electricity.
Also in the queue, Tasneem Herold, said she had been living with a mental disability “for years”. She was at the SASSA office to re-apply for a disability grant after being hospitalised for nearly two months. Herold said her grant helped to buy food and electricity for the month.
Pensioner Patricia Carls, 62, of Strandfontein said she looked after her brother-in-law who is disabled. “My brother in law wears kimbies [adult nappies] and it’s very expensive. I’m a pensioner. I don’t know what we’d do if I don’t get our money this month.”
Carls said last month a total of R700 had been deducted from the grants she collected. “I came to query it immediately and then it stopped,” she said.
Loretta Moodley, 52, said about R300 had been deducted from the R660 grant she gets for her two children. “I never had a problem like this before, but this started last month. I reported it, but still don’t what happened to my money. I had to do char work and borrow money to pay our rent,” she said.
“The money we get just isn’t enough,” she said.
At the SASSA pay point at the Portlands Indoor Centre in Mitchells Plain, pensioner Nosisa Magxolo from Philippi said she was happy to have received her grant. “My grandchildren were telling me that we might not get paid today,” she said.
“How would I have supported my family? I have unemployed children. My old age grant and my grandchildren’s grants are our only source of income,” said Magxolo.
Nokuphila Tshangela said she had not been paid the full amount of her child support grant for nearly two years. She had been less than R200 each month instead of R380. Tshangela said she had given up trying to get her money back. “I have gone to SASSA offices so many times with no help,” said Tshangela.
CPS has said the new contract complies with the Constitutional Court order that the personal information of grant beneficiaries should be kept confidential and that other companies in the Net1 group to which CPS belongs should not invite beneficiaries to “opt-in” to share their personal details.
Lawyers representing the Black Sash had argued in court that CPS was sharing beneficiaries’ data with other Net1 companies. The Black Sash, which has been running a “Hands off our Grants” campaign, said it had received an overwhelming number of complaints from grant beneficiaries of deductions for airtime, electricity and loans. Net1 CEO Serge Belamant has denied this.