Cape Town - Democratic Alliance member of Parliament (MP) Bridget Masango on Friday said they were collecting information across the country and expected a report from the Social Security Agency of South Africa (Sassa) on the process of the food parcel “relief measure”.
She said that during parliament’s portfolio committee on Thursday, Sassa reported that about 700,000 people have been affected by the issue of not getting their money.
“So you would want to know, did all those 700,000 people got the food parcels. I mean how selective has this process been because if you are not reaching out to all those people who have been affected, that would be unfair and we want to know, once we get a report that says we went to each and every area or every paypoint where people did not get their money and even those who were sent away and never came back, they actually got the food parcels,” said Masango in an interview.
She added that the DA wanted to see how the operations at the South African Post Office has been affected as this was the critical time for Sassa and its new partner which is the post office in the payment of grant.
“The information is coming from various parts of the country where colleagues said me they will physically go to the post offices next to where they are, and let me know what the situation is. The shutdown of the post office which is going on strike which is also going to further affect the beneficiaries of Sassa.”
At least 700,000 of the 17 million South Africans are beneficiaries of state grants that include child support, dependency and foster child care, have struggled to access their grants since technical problems arose with the new payment system on Sunday.
This after the Social Security Agency of South Africa has migrated to a new payment system operated by the South African Post Office (Sapo), which Masango has regarded as “very badly planned and horrible uncoordinated”.
- African News Agency (ANA)