The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) will re-register all its beneficiaries through a biometric enrolment system to ensure life verification and identity authentication of beneficiaries.
Social development minister Bathabile Dlamini said in her budget vote this week that the agency has repositioned itself to address its challenges of a lack of standardisation, incomplete information on beneficiary details, and the risks of potential fraud associated therewith.
The re-registration process will start from 1 June and end in December.
SASSA has also introduced a new payment system, which the minister said will save government R800 million per annum, overall R4 billion over five years.
“We also aim to upgrade an additional 400 pay-points and 300 local offices over the MTEF [medium-term expenditure framework].
The minister explained that the social grant system is prone to leakages and fraudulent activities. “To mitigate this, government has allocated, over the MTEF, an amount of R30 million for setting up an inspectorate institution with a mandate to monitor the integrity of the grant administration system, to ensure its credibility. The inspectorate should be fully functional by 2015.”
Old intentions?
In her budget speech last year, the minister said the department will implement a number of IT systems to improve its service delivery, especially at SASSA.
This included the introduction of a new payment system over a five-year period to reduce disbursement costs, while enhancing the experience of beneficiaries.
AllPay, a subsidiary of big four bank Absa, is set to square off with SASSA and a competitor next month, over a R10 billion contract it alleges was awarded unlawfully.
AllPay argues SASSA's five-year deal with Net1 UEPS Technologies' unit Cash Paymaster Services, awarded in January to cover SA's nine provinces, does not comply with the necessary regulations and laws.
Net1 previously had a contract to distribute grants in five of SA's nine provinces. AllPay had been handling payments in the Free State, Western Cape, Gauteng and Eastern Cape, for a decade.
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