SASSA Blues

Last year, everyone on the South African Social Welfare System – that’s pensioners who received a state pension and disabled people who received a disability grant – were moved to SASSA, the South African Social Security Agency. 

 

At the time, it was something of a nightmare because thousands of pensioners and the disabled had to trek to stations around the country to re-register on this new system. 

 

I did a couple of stories about the issues surrounding this new credit card system, from technical problems, to attendants working at the stations asking cardholders for their PINS so that they could activate the cards for them, to non-payments of grants. 

 

This week I stumbled on some new cracks in the SASSA system… Trevor is a paraplegic on a disability grant.

 

The fact is Trevor is one of thousands of disabled people who must make their way to a Pick and Pay or an ATM, making them moving targets carrying around cash.

 

What’s more is that they receive such a small amount of money anyway, an now have to pay an R11 Saswitch charge and an additional bank charge of R3 totalling R14 if they want to draw their grants from an ATM.

 

That’s actually the equivalent of a taxi or bus fare, transport that these people have to use to get to these pay stations. 

 

Take a listen to what Vusumuzi Mahai the Senior Manager of Communications at SASSA has to say:

Do you know someone who’s having problems with SASSA?

 

You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or Follow him on Twitter @terencepillay1 and tweet him your feedback.