Some Sassa grants inaccessible due to technical glitches

Compounding the confusion around Sassa is the that fact that the Vryheid post office was unable to issue Sassa cards for more than a month as they had run out of the new gold cards. A woman who asked not be named for fear of victimization said she had been standing in the post office queue for more than four hours, leaving her children in the care of relatives as she still hadn’t received her new Sassa gold card. If she had received her card, she would have been able to conveniently draw her money at a retail outlet or ATM.

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When the post office ran out of Sassa cards, some grant beneficiaries were asked to open Mzansi accounts as an interim measure so that their grants could be paid. However, the post office has received new stock of the Sassa cards and the Mzansi cards are no longer necessary.

Technical glitches were experienced over the weekend, by beneficiaries attempting to access their grants with the new gold card. Vryheid’s grant beneficiaries said they were mostly unaffected by the glitches, except for a few pensioners who received an ‘invalid pin’ notification when they attempted to use their new Sassa gold cards. These residents are advised to visit the post office to reset their pin.

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Mr VC Xulu said that he had travelled from Mondlo to collect his grant over the weekend but had to return on Wednesday due to the system being offline, spending money on travelling costs that he would otherwise have spent on food.

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