Ministers Lindiwe Zulu and Mondli Gungubele are expected to give a briefing regarding the system glitches that left thousands of grant recipients, mainly the elderly, without their money.
THE MINISTER of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, and the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Mondli Gungubele, are expected to give insight into why thousands of people were left without their grant payments this month.
At 1pm on Wednesday, Zulu and Gungubele are also expected to provide an overview on the causes of the system outage and outline measures by both the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) and Postbank to prevent similar events from recurring in the future.
Last week, Postbank issued a statement acknowledging its technical challenges that affected payments on September 5 and 6.
At the time, Postbank said clients using the Sassa Postbank gold card could not make withdrawals or transact at ATMs and other retailers, even though Sassa had made payments into clients’ accounts.
“The technical challenges only affected clients who were using the Sassa Postbank gold card. Other clients, who were receiving grants at various pay points or other banks, except Postbank, were not affected and were able to withdraw their payments,” the statement read.
Following this, Postbank issued a second statement, saying monies had been credited to beneficiaries’ accounts and was available for withdrawal at ATMs, retailers and Post Office branches, however, some grantees complained that when they went to make withdrawals, but they could not access their funds.
Human rights advocacy group Black Sash said the issue of technical challenges should not be the burden of grant recipients.
“From the start, Postbank’s system has not been designed to adequately administer the payment of social grants. We worry that there was a failure by the Department of Social Development and Sassa, prior to partnering with Postbank, to do proper due diligence to determine whether Postbank had the capacity, expertise and infrastructure to administer the payment of social grants,” said Black Sash director Rachel Bukasa.
She further stressed that there is a constitutional obligation to provide social assistance.
Bukasa said the failure to deliver social grants is a breach of this obligation, of which the responsibility lies with DSD and Sassa.
“Therefore, these entities must be held accountable. We demand that both DSD and Sassa, as a matter of priority, outline exactly how it will ensure the integrity of the social grant payment system going forward so that the burden of system failures is no longer placed on beneficiaries,” Bukasa said.
Postbank took over Sassa payments from the Post Office in 2022.
In an interview with 702, Black Sash regional manager in the Western and Northern Cape, Thandi Henkeman, said that since the takeover, payment issues have persisted.
Henkeman said Postbank’s systems are not equipped to deal with the payments, which leads to breaches.
She added that while Postbank faces the issues, the responsibility lies with the Department of Social Development who has the duty to protect and fulfil its mandate to provide social assistance.
