Cape Town - The Pay the Grants campaign has called for immediate public clarity from Sassa on the latest payment issues plaguing the disbursement of the R350 SRD (Social Relief of Distress) grant.
The latest challenges include caregivers’ Sassa cards not reflecting their SRD money while many who use retail stores were told they aren’t registered.
Beneficiaries on the cash-send option were also not receiving their SMS with access information, while special permit holders were still unable to use retailers because of a lack of passport options.
This comes less than two weeks after Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu apologised for the challenges experienced in applying for the grant, saying she had asked Sassa to provide ongoing communication and publicity through media accessible to beneficiaries to clarify public matters relating to the grant.
However, the movement said dire problems still plagued the disbursement of the grant. Instead of clear communication and action, communities had to navigate a broken system and jammed helplines without answers.
Recent communication from Sassa stated that those without smartphones must not use the EFT option due to the risk of payment processing failures, but the movement said this meant all the methods of payment available had errors.
It said this was partially due to technical errors with Postbank, which remain unresolved, and that beneficiaries were quietly told to contact Postbank to resolve these issues themselves if they were in a hurry.
Sassa spokesperson Paseka Letsatsi said the agency was aware of challenges relating to the collection of funds at retailers and in partnership with Postbank was working around the clock to resolve them.
Letsatsi said last week there were delays in updating changed cellphone numbers, hence the “not registered” error experienced by beneficiaries trying to access their funds at retailers. He said this had been resolved.
Letsatsi said cash-send beneficiaries who had pay dates should contact their banks if they had not received a voucher to collect the funds.
Those for cash-send with no payments dates must provide banking details as they would have failed the mobile number verification.
He said a solution for special permit holders to collect their funds at retailers had been tested successfully with one retailer.