SCOPA summons SASSA to account for social grants crisis

27 February 2017

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) has summoned the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to appear before the committee tomorrow, 28 February 2017, to account for the self-inflicted social grants crisis.

The hearing will present yet another attempt to extract the truth over the bungled CPS contract that has placed payments to 17 million poor and vulnerable beneficiaries at risk.

The CPS contract was previously declared irregular by the Constitutional Court and SASSA has since failed in their attempt to find a solution.

First, SASSA proposed that they would take over the function themselves and wasted millions on consultants only to arrive at the conclusion that they lack the capacity to distribute social grants.

The only option left to SASSA was to approach the Constitutional Court to condone an extension of the irregular CPS contract.

With the deadline of 31 March 2017 looming, the DA would have expected immediate action, however, Minister Bathabile Dlamini has failed to file any papers.

The DA believes that this emergency has been created deliberately by Minister Dlamini to extend the CPS contact, possibly at an inflated price of R 1.3 billion.

17 Million vulnerable South African are dependent on social assistance from the state. As a result of Minister Dlamini and SASSA’s delay tactics, they are at risk of not receiving their grants on 1 April 2017.

The DA will not stand for this and in SCOPA we will be relentless in extracting the truth to once and for all clear the SASSA confusion and find a solution to this crisis.

Issued by Tim Brauteseth, DA Spokesperson for SCOPA, 27 February 2017