Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu says the delay in the payment of this month’s social grants to some recipients is due to a necessary verification process.
Thousands of people have not received their social payments- with the South African Social Security Agency(Sassa) also reiterating that the delay is caused by an error with the personal information verification process.
About 150 000 beneficiaries are reportedly affected by the non payment. Zulu said that the process is to ensure that the right people are paid.
“There is a verification process that needs to be done- and this information is very well known to many of the grant beneficiaries, many of whom should have been able to go to SASSA and be able to verify this information. The challenge we have is that when information is not properly verified- when SASSA then gets to pay people who are not supposed to have been paid- we get into big trouble even with the Auditor General.”
Over 74 000 deceased recipients wrongly paid by SASSA:
Sassa revealed last week that over 70 000 beneficiaries did not receive their social grants due to suspicious fraudulent activities detected in their accounts.
Sassa’s spokesperson, Paseka Letsatsi, explained that the issue was brought to their attention by the Auditor General, prompting an investigation into certain payments with apparent irregularities.
Letsatsi stated, “This matter was basically picked up by the Auditor General that there are some payments which are made to certain numbers which have got some suspicious elements. In this instance, you would find that there is an increase suddenly of people opening bank accounts, targeting one bank account. When we investigate, we find that the real beneficiary, when they come to withdraw the money month-end, there is no money because it has been taken by fraudsters.”
