For three days in a row, asthmatic pensioner Liziwe Made, 87, and her niece have braved the cold and taken two taxis to the Sassa offices in Zwide – at a cost of R44 a day – to try to collect her grant.
On Wednesday, Made – who helps look after her 100-year-old brother – went home empty-handed once again.
The social grant distributing agency’s acting chief executive apologised later to the nation for the crisis which has led to some grant beneficiaries not being able to access their money since the beginning of the week.
While Made – and other equally desperate grant recipients – queued in vain this week, the Public Servants Association (PSA) said its members would continue to strike if the SA Social Security Agency did not meet its demands.
Sassa employees affiliated to the union went on strike on Tuesday‚ demanding a 15% salary increase and a housing allowance of R2‚500.
They are also demanding that married couples employed by Sassa both receive the increased housing allowance‚ that Sassa offices be closed over Christmas and New Year‚ and a minimum of three days’ special leave for religious activities for workers who are not Christian.
The strike has exacerbated an already dire situation as technical glitches relating to the change of distributor from Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) to the SA Post Office have affected the grant payouts‚ leaving some of the poorest of the poor in a dire situation.
Made’s niece, Zukwisa Thindala, 45, who helps care for her elderly aunt and uncle in Soweto-on-Sea, said: “I think my aunt will die before she gets her grant money because her pressure and stress levels have increased rapidly since she started having problems with this card.
“She has not paid her loans and her funeral cover and needs money for her problematic chest and legs that are giving in.
“Out of desperation, I have bought groceries for them using my two children’s meagre grant money which I normally use for the children’s transport fees, because there is no food at their home.”Thindala said she felt Sassa and Post Office officials were passing the buck when it came to explaining the problem.
“The money did not come out of the ATM at two different retail stores in town and at the Kenako Mall [in New Brighton on Sunday], so I decided to go to the Post Office the next day.
“When we were in the queue at Kenako, we were told to turn back because the money had run out.”
Thindala and her aunt were just two of the many people in the long queues at Sassa’s Zwide office on Wednesday.
Disabled Veeplaas resident Mamela Mhlaba, 41, broke down in tears as she told how she had walked to more than three different paypoints in an attempt to get her disability grant.
Mhlaba, a stroke victim, said when she went to the Zwide Sassa office on Monday, she was shocked to learn that her card belonged to someone else. “I came to create the new Postbank card in June after payday.
“I got my card on that day but then, on Monday, I could not withdraw money,” an upset Mhlaba said.
“I then came to the Sassa offices, where I was told that this card did not belong to me.
“I have come here every day this week – they called the other person to come to the office on Tuesday but that person has not come yet. I am unable to buy groceries.
“I am unable to pay my accounts or even my rent.
“What’s worse is that they keep on telling me to come the next day instead of giving me a way forward,” she said.
Last month, Sassa’s Eastern Cape spokesperson, Luzuko Qina, said the migration onto the new payment system had experienced some teething problems and 3,000 beneficiaries had not been paid on the first day of the month.
On Tuesday‚ social development minister Susan Shabangu approached the Labour Court in a bid to stop the strike by Sassa employees.
She argued that the workers could not strike as they delivered an essential service.
Union spokesperson Tahir Mayepa, however, disputed this, saying: “The minister has to prove that our members are responsible for the payment of social grants because it is not true.
“We are going to continue to strike as long as they don’t want to collectively bargain with us.
“Going to court is a waste of money‚” Mayepa said.
“If the minister can call an urgent bargaining meeting‚ we will stop the strike.”
Sassa acting chief executive Abraham Mahlangu told parliament’s portfolio committee on social development that the affected beneficiaries could not receive their grants due to a glitch in the system, which had taken strain due to the high number of people who had registered with the Post Office.
“We should be showing that we are a caring government. It is for that reason that we apologise to the nation‚” he said.
Mahlangu said the SA Post Office’s account profile was at about 233‚000 accounts in May and had jumped to more than 930‚000 since it started with the card swap and opening of new Sassa cards.
This and the multiple attempts to access grants by the beneficiaries had contributed to the strain in the system which had led to the timing out.He said technical glitches were first experienced when the payment cycle was opened at about midnight on June 30, when a number of people trying to access their social grants using the new Sassa cards could not get the money.
“We also realised there was another error which caused the timing out – it was the line that connects the SA Post Office’s integrated grant payment system with the banks’ server as part of the transaction processing.”
The third issue related to the over-the-counter limit where beneficiaries could not withdraw more than R1,500 as this was the threshold.
The cap had since been removed‚ he said.
Some could not withdraw cash from the SPAR group due to banks not having updated their systems as far as the SPAR group was concerned, but this had also been resolved.
“The issue about the system performance has improved drastically,” Mahlangu said.
“I am monitoring the system on an hourly basis nationally.
“I am getting positive reports that people are beginning to get their grants.
“They are confident that they will finish the queues by close of business [Wednesday]‚” he told the committee’s chairperson, Zoleka Capa, over the phone.
Mahlangu‚ who was put on a loudspeaker‚ told MPs he could not attend the parliamentary meeting as he had to be on the ground addressing the crisis.
A Sassa executive member‚ Dianne Dunkerley‚ also apologised for the “serious stress that we had caused”.
She said people who could not access their money earlier this week could try again on Thursday or Friday.
Dunkerley said the problem had been confined only to the new Sassa cards‚ and everybody else had been getting their money.
She said trial runs were done but the challenge became apparent when a large volume of people flooded the system.
MPs still raised concerns about why potential problems had not been picked up earlier.
– Additional reporting by TimesLIVE