Picture: Gallo Images/Alet Pretorius
With the deadline for replacing South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) gold cards with black Postbank cards less than a month away, there have been several serious concerns with reports of grant recipients sleeping outside of facilities and others allegedly being denied medical care.
During a portfolio committee meeting on Wednesday, members of parliament expressed that the 20th March deadline is insufficient.
The date was initially set for 28 February but was later extended. According to Sassa, when the deadline approaches, beneficiaries will not be able to use the old cards.
Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Social Development, Bridget Staff Masango, revealed that although a meeting with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies had been fruitful, Postbank failed to share the required information with the committee.
“We had what I believe was a very fruitful meeting where there was a lot of transparency and honesty,” she said. “At the end of that meeting, this portfolio committee asked for information to be shared with it. I am partly happy to say that the department sent the information as requested, and the entity Sassa sent the information as requested, but we have not received anything from Postbank.”
Masango expressed concern about this lack of transparency, noting that the information was crucial for committee members to conduct oversight visits and monitor the situation on the ground.
“That is concerning because that is the information we were going to use as we do our oversights to monitor the situation that is concerning on the ground,” she stated. “We’re dealing with people’s lives and livelihoods in fact, and so we need to act accordingly.”
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Several committee members shared disturbing first-hand accounts of the challenges beneficiaries are facing.
UMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party MP Reverend Nhlanhla Bernard Gcwabaza reported visiting a distribution site on Monday, where the situation was dire.
“What we found on the ground was terrible, it’s terrifying. If I was a man that cries, I was going to cry on Monday,” he said. “There were people that were there from 1am. They are still [in ]the line… there were people that slept there.”
He explained that the system was extremely slow, processing only “13 people in 3 hours,” and that some recipients found their new cards didn’t work when they tried to use them at stores.
“We have a serious problem chairs, and we cannot continue as usual as if nothing has happened,” he added. “Postbank’s technicians are not on the ground; nobody’s on the ground. That is the biggest challenge that we are facing.”
ALSO READ: Sassa grant: March payment dates, gold card rush and April increases
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP Paulnita Marais shared similar concerns, highlighting particular challenges faced by elderly and disabled beneficiaries.
“Postbank didn’t come out and say what are they going to do with the old age homes, what are they going to do with the bedridden persons,” she said.
She recounted a call she recently received from an elderly woman about her mother with dementia and husband with cancer.
“She’s been to Sassa, to Postbank, yesterday [on Tuesday]. They cut her off for the third time. She doesn’t have money to go back,” Marais explained, adding that the woman felt she was treated rudely by staff.
“The people of Postbank, they don’t have a clue how to work with these people,” Marais stated. “The 20th of March is not going to work. They’re not going to finish by the 20th of March, not at the rate they are going.”
ALSO READ: Portfolio committee calls for extension of Sassa Gold Card deadline
Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Alexandra Abrahams raised concerns about elderly beneficiaries being unable to access healthcare services because of the card switch.
She noted that many seniors preferred the gold card because it clearly identified them as Sassa beneficiaries.
“Many seniors are saying that the reason why they preferred the gold card was because it said Sassa on it. The new Postbank card doesn’t say Sassa on it,” she explained. “They are now concerned that when they go to places like public hospitals and public clinics where the staff would ask ‘show us your Sassa card’ to distinguish between patients, they have nothing to show anymore.”
Abrahams suggested creating an electronic service where beneficiaries could easily access automated confirmation letters proving they are Sassa clients.
She also shared a distressing incident where a care facility refused to accept an elderly man in need of emergency placement because he didn’t have his new Sassa card, despite being referred by a social worker.
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The Minister of Social Development Nokuzola Tolashe acknowledged the crisis and supported the committee’s call for Postbank to appear before them.
She confirmed the severity of the situation after conducting unannounced visits to several sites.
“Indeed, there’s a crisis. It is a crisis because, as we indicated in our last meeting, there seems to be no plan. If there’s any, I still have to see it,” she said.
“I’ve been in Cape Town, I’ve been in Paarl, I’ve been in Khayelitsha, I’ve been in Bellville, I went to Elsies River… just to go and see whether the plan that we were told about is in fact working. And indeed, myself and the team, we can safely say without fear of any contradiction, honorable chair, there is no plan.”
The minister described the distressing conditions on the ground, with elderly people sleeping at distribution points overnight due to anxiety that their grants would be cut off if they didn’t swap their cards before the deadline.
“The anxiety that we have created is so bad. Even when I personally spoke to them, they could not hear me because from where they sit, if they don’t swap the cards, they will not get their cards; therefore, there will be no grants,” she explained.
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She confirmed what the committee members had already suggested — that the 20 March deadline was unrealistic.
“We can safely say here [that] the March deadline is not going to be met. There’s just no way,” she stated. “In fact, when you look at what is happening on the ground, that deadline was not informed by any fact. It was just a deadline for the sake of having it.”
Tolashe described how, in some locations, 11 000 people were left to swap cards with no Postbank points to serve them. She also pointed out serious operational issues, including situations where tellers couldn’t work because “the system can’t capture their fingerprints.”
She concluded by noting that beneficiaries don’t distinguish between Sassa and Postbank, with many blaming Sassa for the problems.
“People don’t know who Postbank is. It does not feature anywhere. People say, ‘Sassa is doing this to us. Why is Sassa so cruel? What did we do to Sassa for them to treat us like they are doing?'”
The committee agreed to call Postbank to appear before it to account for the ongoing issues with the card switchover process.
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