Post Office must continue with payment of social grants

11 May 2022

Note to Editors: Please find an attached soundbite by Solly Malatsi MP.

The DA will write to the Ministers of Digital Technologies and Communications and Social Development to urge them to reverse the senseless decision by the South African Post Office (SAPO) to no longer pay the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant at its branches.

This move will no doubt disadvantage millions of poor South Africans who rely on this grant to provide for their families by forcing them to incur unnecessary additional travel expenses to access this grant outside of the communities they live in. Many rural communities struggle with access to Post Office branches as more and more branches are closed countrywide.

The insistence by SAPO that its decision to stop paying the social relief grant at its branches will help “alleviate long queues” is not good enough.

At a time when the cost of living is at an all-time high, poor South Africans need their government to provide them with the relief they need to make ends meet, instead of suffocating them with additional expenses, all in pursuit of reducing long queues.

The long queues at Post Office branches are a result of the entity’s chronic inefficiency, shortage of staff and obsolete technological infrastructure and not because of the beneficiaries of the social relief grants. To blame those queue on the latter is to gaslight poor South Africans.

The DA will leverage all the parliamentary channels to oppose this move and if needs be, we will pursue legal action.

Issued by Solly Malatsi & Bridget Masango, DA, 11 May 2022