Threat to grant payments: minister must say how he is going solve SASSA efficiency problems

In the current election campaign, the ANC has repeatedly touted the social grant system as the central pillar of it offer to the people of South Africa. Yet that very system is on the brink of collapse (see here) as a result of the governing party's incompetence in managing the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA). A Democratic Alliance (DA) government would, in contrast, never allow this to happen, because we recognise how crucial and life-sustaining the social grant safety net is to the poorest of our people.

The DA therefore challenges Social Development Minister, Zola Skweyiya, to explain what he is going to do to overhaul the management of SASSA in order to prevent the total collapse of the grant payment system.

While the Department of Social Development is openly attempting to buy ANC votes around the country with R500 million in poverty alleviation grants, the Department's ongoing legal problems around contracts with providers for the payment of ordinary grants raises doubts about whether it can guarantee an ongoing service beyond the election.

The latest crisis facing the department is its failure so far to sign a renewal agreement of its contract with companies who manage the payment of social grants. If it does not do this quickly, the contracting companies will not be able to pay social grants at the end of the month.

But even if the department does sign these agreements soon enough to allow grants to be paid this month, it is still in the process of being sued by one of these companies for the botched tender process that it followed to award tenders for grant payments, and it has still not yet resolved the problems with the tender process that resulted in it being sued in the first place.

Last year SASSA was slammed by the courts for setting requirements for bidders in which "none of the strategic objectives of the payment tender were met". The court found that the requirements were ambiguous, they would have resulted in an "unfair and uncompetitive bidding process", and they would not have allowed BEE requirements to be met. As a result, the courts ordered the tender to be cancelled. A new tender process has yet to be announced. Yet this process began two years ago.

Dr Skweyiya was himself implicated in wrongdoing when it was revealed that his wife was involved in one of the tendering companies, and questions will always remain about how much this might have influenced the outcome of the process. This places even more of an obligation on Skweyiya to remove all doubts about the integrity of his department.

Statement issued by Janet Semple MP, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on social development, March 25 2009

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