Cape Town - Parliament's Social Development Committee and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) will on Tuesday grill SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) heads on the agency's progress to comply with the Constitutional Court ruling.
Earlier this year, the Constitutional Court ruled that Sassa should work on ensuring that a service provider is in place by next year April to distribute social grants. This is after the court extended the contract of Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) until March 2018. The court had ruled in 2014 that the process to appoint CPS to take over social grants was illegal.
The South African Post Office (Sapo) was punted as a service provider to help distribute social grants and had been engaging with Sassa.
However, it doesn't seem like the engagements proved fruitful because on Tuesday Social Development Minster Bathabile Dlamini announced that Sapo would not be able to meet all the requirements to be awarded the tender to distribute social grants.
Dlamini said Sapo could only meet one of the services which is the provision of an 'integrated payment system'.
She said Sassa will initiate a new tender process on November 3 for service provider that could provide the other three services; banking services, card body production and the provision of cash payment services.
The process will be completed by end of February - a month before the Constitutional Court deadline.
Opposition parties have reacted with anger to Dlamini's announcement, with some predicting that it was unlikely that Sassa would be able to have a service provider in place by April next year.
The IFP's Liezl van der Merwe said she believes the matter is likely to end up back in court.
"This matter will end up back in court because they will not be able to find a service provider in time. We are still in for a rough ride, it does not seem like anything is moving," said van der Merwe.
"South Africans don't deserve this mess. The minster has shown no leadership in this process. We don't want CPS to come back and we don't need them to come back and loot just like they have done before," she said.