Black Sash: Sassa grant apologies meant nothing to the hungry, vulnerable, and elderly

Sassa and Postbank did not deliver for pensioners at a briefing today where the ministers of social development and communication were supposed to provide an overview of the causes of the grant payment system outage, says human rights organisation The Black Sash.

Lindiwe Zulu and Mondli Gungubele were among officials who addressed the media to outline measures by Sassa as well as Postbank to prevent similar events from recurring. 

“We are disappointed that neither minister nor the respective CEOs failed to outline any plan or measures by Sassa and Postbank to prevent similar events from happening again.

“There was also no mention of how government will mitigate the impact any future system failures will have on beneficiaries,” Rachel Bukasa, Black Sash director, said after the briefing.

Postbank CEO, Ntomboxolo Mbengashe, explained the system challenges that led to the transactions of some beneficiaries culminating in transaction incomplete errors due to system communication timeouts.

She stressed these types of errors are common in the banking sector and Postbank is 90% sure this will not happen again, but as with any banking IT system, ‘glitches’ are unavoidable.

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No plan or guarantees to protect Sassa pensioners in future

“We are alarmed and dismayed by these comments. Not only does it demonstrate that our own government does not grasp the seriousness these system failures have on the most vulnerable, the elderly, who are the poorest in our communities. It shows that beneficiaries must just accept that there will be delays in accessing their grant monies,” Bukasa says.

Both ministers were at pains to issue their sincerest apologies to affected beneficiaries and stressed that Sassa and Postbank are not failing in their mandate to pay social grants to millions of beneficiaries because the grants are still paid even if they are delayed.

“This makes their apologies sound hollow. It means nothing to a hungry, vulnerable, elderly person who has no money and no food to eat.”

She said Black Sash is concerned Postbank does not appear to have a proper grasp on how many beneficiaries were affected by this recent system failure and how many account holders still cannot access their grant monies. Postbank initially said that 240 000 beneficiaries were affected, but today said it is in the region of 600 000.

“Our teams visited payment sites today, some an hour before the media briefing and there are still elderly pensioners unable to access their grants,” Bukasa says.

Because Postbank is unable to give a 100% guarantee that system failures will not happen again, Black Sash urges Sassa and Postbank to share what the plan is should it happen again, and what beneficiaries should do.  

“We again call on both ministers to launch an independent investigation to probe the integrity of the grant payment system. It cannot be acceptable that we must just accept that system errors are normal.”

Bukasa says Black Sash also wants to see that the Master Service Agreement (MSA) between Sassa and Postbank must be finalised and signed, as this is an important mechanism needed to hold both properly accountable, especially if further technical challenges can be expected.

It is important because it will also outline what penalties will be imposed should there be further ‘glitches’ or risks to the integrity of the grant payment system, added Bukasa.