Siyabonga Mkhwanazi
Political Bureau
A bruising court battle between Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini and social grant distributing company Cash Paymaster Service (CPS), over the revised terms of a R10 billion contract, has been averted after the two parties agreed to sort out the terms of the contract.
While Dlamini had threatened legal action if CPS did not sign a revised contract by Tuesday, CPS had maintained she had no legal ground to change the terms of the contract without their consent.
The two parties confirmed yesterday they were now in discussions on the revised terms of the tender.
Last month Dlamini accused CPS of stalling for six months to sign the revised tender.
The agreement between Dlamini and CPS comes when the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) is to start advertising a new multi-billion-rand tender for social grants.
This is in line with the ruling of the Constitutional Court for Sassa, which reports to Dlamini, to re-run the tender after the CPS’s contract was successfully challenged by AllPay.
The court found the R10bn tender was invalid and it had to be re-run without disrupting the distribution of social grants to 16 million people.
The spokeswoman for Dlamini, Lumka Oliphant, said yesterday CPS was in talks with the Sassa to amend the terms of the current tender.
CPS CEO Serge Belamont also confirmed the discussions and said they were close to finalising outstanding issues.
Dlamini’s threat to go to court happened after it emerged that CPS’s subsidiaries were involved in lending and debiting money from pensioners, leaving them in dire straits.
But this was denied by Belamont at the time, who said it did not give biometric data of social grant beneficiaries to any parties.
Dlamini said to fix the problem they wanted CPS to sign a revised Service Level Agreement, failing which she would go to court.
She gave the company 14 days to come to the table.
Belamont said they were now singing the same tune as Dlamini and Sassa.
“What we did to help the minister was we engaged with Sassa. We went with them through clauses in the Service Level Agreement that Sassa wanted to modify,” said Belamont. He said they gave this to their lawyers to check.
Oliphant said negotiations were under way between the two parties.
She also confirmed that a new tender will be advertised.
This is in compliance with the order of the Constitutional Court to re-run the tender.
The court wanted a transparent process, she said.
“The department and Sassa are following the order of the court,” she said.