Bathabile Dlamini has reassured beneficiaries of social grants that they do not have to make new applications to continue receiving their grants.
|||Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini on Friday reassured beneficiaries of social grants and pensions that they do not have to make new applications to continue receiving their grants.
This, after the minister announced that her department has embarked on a massive drive to verify all beneficiaries.
This raised fears that beneficiaries would have to re-apply for the grants, leading to complications at the offices of the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) across the country.
But, Dlamini said, all beneficiaries would have to do was to simply produce their identity documents at their local pay points on the day that they received the grants.
They would then be captured on the new biometric system, so that the department and the agency could verify their status as living beneficiaries.
Dlamini said the agency would be visiting the homes of beneficiaries who were older than 75 years to verify their status and their addresses.
According to Dlamini, the process is aimed at fighting corruption and fraud-related to grants as grants were being paid to some people who had died.
SASSA is currently paying social grant benefits to more than 15.3 million South Africans, 10.3 million of whom are children.
“We must state upfront that this is not a process for beneficiaries to do new applications but to verify their identification.
“Over the years, the auditor-general has raised concerns about the manual system that SASSA has been using. It is also important to highlight that government seeks to use this process to eliminate fraud and corruption and to create a conducive environment for SASSA to have a solid database of all beneficiaries to enable it to pay grants on behalf of the government in future,” said Dlamini.
She said the new system to be used by the department would come at a cost of R2 billion per annum, which is a saving of R80 million per annum from the previous contracts.
“We want to allay fears of our people and assure them that their grants will not be cut during this process. The re-registration of beneficiaries will be done at their local pay points. After the pay points, we will then focus on beneficiaries who get their money from banks. We (hope) we will be able to eliminate or clamp down on those who receive social grants fraudulently,” she said.
According to Dlamini, the department has already taken steps against 37 officials within the department who have been implicated in fraud and corruption related to the issuing of grants.
She said 10 of the officials were still being investigated, while 27 were facing criminal charges.
Dlamini said parents who were receiving grants for their children would have to present their children for verification.
- Pretoria News Weekend