Sassa to punish grant fraudsters
Syndicates and individuals defrauded the State of tens of millions of rands through false claims.
Names of bogus grant beneficiaries will be handed to the fraud unit of the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA), says Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini.
Dlamini said this would happen once the overhaul of the social grant fraud database was complete.
Dlamini was speaking during a media briefing in Braamfontein where she gave the statistics of the previous challenge they had.
“A total of 1,015,489 social grants have been removed from the SOCPEN (social pension) system since the commencement of the re-registration process.
“Factual verifications of the re-registration back-office process is still being done before the files are to be sent to the Fraud Management and Compliance Unit.”
Dlamini said: “We are aware that there are certain individuals in the townships who are working with the social officials to illegally apply and get approved as social grants, we want to emphasise that we are aware and will soon punish them after the investigations.”
Last year, in an attempt to clean up the database, all grant recipients were required to re-register.
“At the time, it was reported that syndicates and individuals had defrauded the State of tens of millions of rands through false claims,” said Dlamini.
