CPS CEO says govt will ‘pay more’ if it uses Post Office to pay grants

In legal court papers filed on Tuesday, CPS boss Serge Belamant has issued a response as to why his company should retain the Sassa contract and he has even gone further to advise why allowing the Post Office to takeover the contentious contract from CPS would essentially be a disaster.

According to Times LIVE, Belamant said the government could expect to pay more if it used the Post Office to disperse grants. He estimated that this would be at an additional cost of R20 per beneficiary by between R668 million and R1.99 billion over the two-year period in comparison to CPS.

The Post Office quote also doesn’t include the cost of re-registering all beneficiaries‚ replacing their cards and the cost of a call centre. The cost of replacing 12 million beneficiary cards is estimated at R200 million and the cost of a call centre is about R6 million annually and it will cost R1 billion to re-register all beneficiaries‚ which Belamant says the Post Office has not factored in, the website reports.

Belamant also stated that if the CPS contract was not finalised by Wednesday, 15 March, then it was very likely that 17 million grant recipients would not be paid.

Meanwhile, finance minister Pravin Gordhan has reassured SA that the matter was under control.

“We want to as soon as possible remove the sense of uncertainty and crisis and give the assurance to the 17 million beneficiaries of the social grant system that they will receive their social grants on the first of April,” Gordhan said.

“Our objective is to ensure that our higher duty to the South African public is executed in the right kind of way, as far as possible within the current framework of the law and where that framework might be constraining we then we must get the courts to agree with us that as a so-called interim or temporary measure certain things are done to ensure that they payment happens.”

His comments come in the wake of social development minister Bathabile Dlamini saying there was no grants crisis and this was merely a term created by the opposition to induce panic in the country.

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