Social development minister Bathabile Dlamini is reportedly keeping president Jacob Zuma in the loop with regards to the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) saga.
This is as the deployment of money trucks is being tipped as a last resort should all else fail.
Business Day reports Zuma does not want to see 17 million social grant beneficiaries inconvenienced come 1 April.
South African social grant payments are administered and distributed by Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), a subsidiary of US-based Net1 UEPS Technologies. The Constitutional Court (ConCourt) declared the CPS contract invalid after it emerged irregular tendering processes were followed in the awarding of the tender.
Last week, the minister said the social department and SASSA are negotiating with the current payments master. Agency spokesperson Kgomoco Diseko confirmed yesterday that talks with CPS started and will be about the terms and conditions of the new contract.
If negotiations between the department, SASSA and CPS fail, the agency may have to deliver money in trucks to beneficiaries, according to The Star.
SASSA and department officials told Parliament's social development committee that extreme measures like using money trucks would have to be employed if all fails.
The newspaper quotes SASSA DG Zane Dangor saying: "We will do what we have done in exceptional cases in the past. It is risky, but it has been done before.
"It is to take cash directly on trucks and pay people. That option will be deployed if all else fails. We don't see that happening though."
Hide and seek
The Department of Social Development and its agency SASSA have been making news headlines for the lack of readiness to take over the distribution and administration of social grants when the contract with CPS expires at the end of the month.
Despite attempts from Parliamentary entities to get answers on the way forward for payments, the department and SASSA have been sketchy about the solutions that will be employed to prevent the potential disaster that will affect beneficiaries.
Dlamini has failed to take accountability for the looming additional hardship that will affect the most vulnerable South Africans, and instead continues to insist all will be well come 1 April.
The minister was absent at yesterday's social development portfolio committee meeting along with the SA Reserve Bank; yet another occasion she failed to answer to members of the committee.
She was expected to appear before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts earlier this week to clarify issues related to the CPS contract, but was a no-show there as well.
Scrambling for answers
After missing its own deadlines to file an application with the ConCourt to have the invalid tender extended, SASSA finally lodged the application on an urgent basis on Tuesday.
However, the agency withdrew the application yesterday, said Diseko.
According to Diseko, the agency has come out with six options of paying out grants after the expiry of the current CPS contract.
The most viable option, according to its analysis, is that of contracting with CPS again from 1 April on a short-term basis until a new tender is advertised, he said.
Diseko did not say when SASSA will re-submit its application to the highest court in the land.
With a new multibillion-rand SASSA contract practically in the bag, CPS' parent company Net1 announced yesterday it is expanding business interests.
Net1 confirmed it is party to an umbrella restructure agreement with Cell C. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange and New York's Nasdaq-listed company has offered to acquire a 15% stake in Cell C for R2 billion.
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