Cape Town - One of the biggest challenges faced by the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) is that criminals queue outside its offices and then sell these spaces to the elderly and needy.
The criminal activity targeting the most vulnerable in society was raised before the portfolio committee on Social Development yesterday (Wednesday).
The Department of Social Development and Sassa briefed the Committee about plans to mitigate the challenges arising from the lapsing of thousands of Temporary Disability Grants (TDG).
As of January 1, over 53 000 of these grants had lapsed in the Western Cape. The province has the largest number of TDG applicants (24.5%) of all provinces.
TDG is provided for a period of six to 12 months, after which it lapses. The renewal of these grants is dependent on a medical re-assessment.
Sassa detailed plans on how it will grapple with the reapplication of these grants, and overcrowding at Sassa offices. This follows concerns raised by the committee during the previous presentation by Sassa on January 20.
“What came from the committee members was that there was poor queue management from our side and that criminals were queuing and selling spaces.There was overcrowding and social distancing was not observed,” said Sassa CEO Totsie Memela.
Sassa executive manager Dianne Dunkerley said contracted doctors for medical assessments will conduct 80 assessments in an eight hour session (six minutes per client), compared to the usual 40 , should this be necessary, in an effort to accelerate the process.
“The amount of money the assessments will cost us for the lapsed TDG will not be more than R32 million. We do have money available within the Sassa allocation to cover those costs,” said Dunkerley.
A booking system is being introduced in order to address this, as well as the overcrowding. Separate queues will be introduced to further ease the management of queues.
“One of the big challenges that we’re coming across and we’re really appealing to everybody to assist us with is, that you will have people come in and lock places in the queue, they get up early and they will block the places, and they will sell it to the clients when they come and it is really not something we support.”
Sassa aims to complete all TDG grants assessments by the end of March 2021 and mitigations are in place should this not be reached. These include supplementing TDG with the Social Relief of Distress Grant, or increasing the number of Sassa operating days and hours to include weekends.
Social Development MEC Sharna Fernandez met with Sassa’s regional branch management, and raised concerns over the lack of doctors in the province conducting re-assessments.
“The lack of doctors has a direct impact on the number of assessments conducted, which despite Sassa’s assurances that the backlog will be finalised by March 31, 2020, is unachievable in my opinion.”
Cape Argus