Social Development
Whether his national counterpart has informed him of the termination of the Master Service Agreement between the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) and Postbank regarding the distribution of social grants; if so, (a) how will this termination affect grant recipients in the province and (b) what will now be utilised by Sassa to distribute social grants?
Minister Sisisi Tolashe has not informed me nor my office of the termination of the MSA between SASSA and Postbank. As the member is aware, SASSA is a national competency and thus does not fall under the Western Cape Government. a) and b) My office has been trying to set a meeting date with the Western Cape SASSA management – as we have built a good rapport in meeting every few weeks – but we have been unsuccessful thus far. We thus do not yet know the impact of the termination on grant recipients in the province, nor SASSA’s contingency plans for Postbank customers.
It must be noted that our office regularly receives queries from SASSA beneficiaries concerning fraudulent activity on their Postbank cards as well as payment-related issues. We hope that SASSA will recommit to more frequent engagements to help resolve these challenges.
