The South African South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has reiterated its call to beneficiaries to desist from giving their grant cards to loan sharks. This follows the arrest of seven suspects who were found in possession of 91 SASSA cards and a cash amount of R190 000 at the Kollonade Mall, north of Pretroia, earlier this week. The suspects are believed to be loan sharks.
The police pounced on two suspects while they were conducting an operation at the mall. Two suspicious looking individuals were spotted at an ATM, upon being searched police discovered 13 SASSA cards and R32 000 in their possession.
This further led the arrest of five more people at the same mall, who were found with 61 cards and R110 000 they could not account for.
“We have just established that these are the people who had cards of SASSA beneficiaries who had actually taken loans, these are loan sharks, but we just want to warn our the public and our beneficiaries in particular that the card which is given to a beneficiary, that’s a state property, it is actually given to a beneficiary so that they are able to access their grant, it is not supposed to be with third parties,’ says SASSA spokesperson, Paseka Letsatsi.
Societal issue
In Sebokeng, two alleged loan sharks were also caught with over 200 cards at an ATM this week. Letsatsi says this trend of SASSA grant recipients heading to loan sharks has increased over the years. He says the organisation is trying all it can to educate the public about loan sharks, but there’s little it can do to curb this.
“What we’ll basically do as an organisation is to continuously educate our beneficiaries s that they must living within what government gives to them, because if they give their card to anybody else, we do not necessarily have control over it and well definitely go and embezzle their money. We know that the loan sharks in terms of the interests the cadre, they are extremely exorbitant,” adds Letsatsi.
Letsatsi says the unregistered loan shark business is a big societal issue. “This is a problem which does not affect SASSA only, it affects everybody in the society, people going to take loans from people who are not even registered and so on.”
In the video below, police make several arrests over social grant fraud:
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