Cabinet to hold Sassa meeting next week - Radebe
2 March 2017
Cape Town – The Cabinet will discuss the pending Sassa social grants crisis with all affected parties next week, Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe said on Thursday.
"Cabinet decided we will have full time next week to get a comprehensive report from all teams, not just social development, but also National Treasury, and all affected parties," he told journalists at a briefing following a Cabinet meeting.
It would be held in Cape Town at a date still to be determined.
"All of us are as concerned as everybody else, as the deputy president highlighted yesterday in Parliament. As a government we are deeply and totally committed that come April 1, 17 million people must be given their social grants," he said.
Cabinet will only say what its position on the matter is after the meeting.
Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini meanwhile has been summoned to appear before Parliament's standing committee on public accounts (Scopa).
Dlamini did not appear at the scheduled Scopa meeting on Tuesday along with representatives from her department and Sassa. She also was not present at a portfolio committee on social development meeting on the same issue on Wednesday.
She will appear at 09:00 on Tuesday.
DA MP Bridget Masanago, who sits on the portfolio committee of social development, said if Dlamini fails to accept the invitation, she will "once again prove that the ANC does not care about the poor and vulnerable in our society".
