Many beneficiaries of social grants were left unpaid for weeks after glitches in the system. File Picture: David Ritchie
Members of the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on social development have demanded assurances from the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) and Postbank that the glitches that affected thousands of grant beneficiaries will not be repeated during the next cycle of payment.
The EFF, DA, IFP and ANC members in the committee said this was a bad state of affairs that left many people struggling to survive.
Sassa and Postbank were appearing before the committee a day after they said all problems had been resolved.
Hundreds of thousands of social grant beneficiaries were left in the lurch for several weeks after the system failed.
Postbank CEO Nikkie Mbengashe told the committee on Wednesday the problem arose after they had to switch from an old system to a new system because of compliance requirements demanded by the South African Reserve Bank.
She said the migration process of their IT system led to the glitches.
Social Development acting Director-General, Linton Mchunu said all the problems have been resolved and beneficiaries have been paid.
“We have been meeting on a daily basis with the team to ensure that every grant recipient gets paid. Staff from Sassa and Postbank are on the ground engaging members of the public. I want to confirm, chair, that all the matters as it pertains to problems of financing have been completely resolved.
“All the monies have been in every recipient’s account as it stands today. Yesterday, the Postbank issued a statement to this effect and the CEO of Postbank will expand on the statement issued. I want to confirm that all the challenges have been resolved,” said Mchunu.
Mbengashe said they have been working on this issue since they were made aware that people had not been paid.
But this has been addressed after they attended to this issue.
She said despite their systems showing that payments have been made to every beneficiary, they were still getting calls about some of the people not being paid.
This was being attended to by Postbank.
“As we sit here, according to our data, we have processed everyone. Everyone has gotten their (money). However, we are still getting calls of people claiming they have not gotten the money, but the system shows they have gotten the money,” said Mbengashe.
She said when they switched their IT systems in line with the Banking Act and Financial Services Act, their systems were not functioning optimally.
They then decided to fix this issue manually.
Mbengashe said they understand the frustration and anger by many people who have not been paid.
However, Postbank has been implementing changes as warranted by the SARB to be in line with the banking laws.
Mbengashe also said their separation from the South African Post Office (Sapo) had an impact because they had to move away from the Sapo systems to a new service provider.
“The bank has been on a programme based on the variation we got from SARB for us to make sure we were compliant with the Banking Act and the regulatory compliance in terms of the Financial Services Act.
“One of the major changes to ensure compliance really impacted our IT infrastructure, and as such, the business since the beginning of the year has been on a programme of migrating and upgrading some of their IT infrastructure. The background also was that we were separating from Sapo. As you would recall, Postbank was part of Sapo and some of the systems we were using were Sapo systems and those were the systems we found not being compliant,” said Mbengashe.
But members of political parties said they need assurances that what happened would not be repeated, as many old people who depend on social grants have been left battling.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
Politics