DA calls for urgent clarity from SASSA on lack of funding for disability grants
22 January 2021
The South African Social Security Agency’s (SASSA) recent admission that it does not have enough money to reinstate and extend the temporary disability grants that lapsed at the end of December is a massive cause for concern. According to SASSA’s executive manager responsible for grants administration, Dianne Dunkerley, the Agency only has R411 million of the R1.2 billion needed to extend the grant payments.
SASSA’s problem to continue to extend disability grant payments is one of its own making. Since the announcement of a continued Covid-19 lockdown, after the initial lockdown of three weeks, the Agency should have foreseen the extension of lapsing disability grant payments and planned accordingly. The Minister of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, is on the National Corona Command Council (NCCC) after all. But instead of ensuring that South Africa’s most vulnerable receive continuous financial aid essential to their health, well-being and survival, the Minister busied herself with regulations that sought to hamper vital aid reaching millions of people.
Had SASSA shown more haste in early 2020 to process applications and ensured that their offices were fully capacitated and that all posts for medical personnel to do the assessments were filled, the crisis could have been contained. But once again, it knowingly walked into a preventable situation – maybe because the SASSA CEO, Busisiwe Memela-Khambula, and the Minister rarely have to face the consequences of their ineptness and callousness.
SASSA needs to urgently reach out to National Treasury to seek a solution, because those reliant on social grants do not have days or weeks to wait. The grants they receive are often the only source of income and takes care of whole families. To put it bluntly; without their grant payments many people will starve. They cannot survive without it and the fear that they might have to because of SASSA’s impotence is beyond cruel.