The South African Post Office (Sapo) and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) have reached a “landmark agreement” on a new grants payment system, Minister in the Presidency responsible for Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation Jeff Radebe announced on Sunday.
“This new system, while drawing on the resources and capabilities of the South African democratic state, will also make allowance for the participation of other partners such as enterprises and commercial banks, in the payment of social grants to beneficiaries,” he told reporters in Pretoria during a briefing on progress made by the inter-ministerial committee (IMC) on social security on implementing the Constitutional Court’s order on social grants.
The agreement – signed between the Sapo and Sassa on December 7 – gave effect to phasing in Sapo and the Postbank as a service provider, and also as one of the key channels through which grants would be paid, he said.
This constituted the first critical step in developing an integrated application and in-sourcing payment system focusing on certain critical objectives, including flexibility for beneficiaries to access their payments; consistency in beneficiary experience irrespective of grant delivery channel; provision of a payment service within the Sassa regulatory environment; access to funds in the most remote parts of the country; reliability of payment service; and safeguarding and protecting the dignity of all beneficiaries.
Fraud, corruption, and leakage would be reduced by provisioning of consistent payments of the right grant to the right person at the right time; ensuring proof of life of beneficiaries as an integral part of the payment process; and ensuring that beneficiaries were not registered more than once.
The new system would also reduce the cost to both Sassa and beneficiaries, which also saved the fiscus significant amounts, Radebe said.
– African News Agency (ANA),
