Reply:

 

1. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2020/21 financial year, the SASSA offices were originally closed, under lockdown level 5. This is as a result of the SASSA administrative services not being declared an essential service. However, despite this lockdown, the payment of social grants continued without interruption.

The movement to the lower levels of lockdown resulted in the offices progressively re- opening, albeit with staff working on rotational shifts. The rotation of staff was to ensure that social distancing could be maintained, and also ensured business continuity, where, if one team was exposed to a positive case, that team could quarantine and the other team of staff who had been rotating could come in to continue providing services. However, this staff reduction through the rotation meant that only approximately 50% of the staff were on duty at any one time, which negatively impacted on the ability to provide services to all who required these.

Measures introduced to address the need for SASSA services, while attempting to reduce the queues at local offices, included the following:

• • Dedication of specific days for specific grant types, with Mondays being for older persons; Tuesdays for persons with disabilities and Wednesdays and Thursdays being for the child grants. Fridays were reserved for people who needed appointments for specific reasons, or dealing with the overflow from the week;
  • Temporary disability grants which should have lapsed during the year between February and December 2020 were not lapsed, but kept in payment until December 2020, thus reducing pressure on local offices for these beneficiaries to have to come in to re-apply;

• • The introduction as from September 2020 of the online grant application platform for grants for older persons, child support grants and foster child grants. Work continues to improve this access channel for social grant applications so that it becomes a viable alternative to having applicants queue at local offices for a face to face service;

• • Strengthening of the call centre through a contract for support services and additional call centre agents, in an effort to reduce the need for citizens to have to go to local offices for simple queries which could be responded to telephonically or through email;

• • Introduction of the online booking system for disability grant appointments, as well as the placement of the referral from on the SASSA website. This was done to reduce the number of times an applicant has to go to a SASSA office for an application for a disability grant from a minimum of 3 to only one – which also reduces the queues at local offices;

• • Strengthening the queue walking by SASSA staff for all those citizens waiting in queues for a service, to be able to attend to those who had only come to collect forms, make enquiries or submit documents while they were still in the queue. This reduced the numbers who need to wait for extended periods for services.

• • The introduction of the R350 social relief of distress grant was done entirely electronically, to ensure that these applicants did not have to go to any SASSA office for a service. Had this not been done electronically, the local offices would not have coped at all, as this grant brought in an additional 10 million applicants, never before serviced by SASSA. During times of full staff capacity, SASSA does on average 1, 2 million applications per year. The existing staff and office infrastructure could therefore not have provided face to face services for this new category of clients served; and

• • The use of volunteers to assist with queue management, both at the SASSA local offices as well as during social grant payments, at the various outlets where beneficiaries gathered to collect their social grants. The volunteers were sourced

through a partnership with the National Development Agency and is a model which the sector would like to continue implementing, if funding is available.

1. Many of the measures introduced in 2020/21 are still in place, to assist in managing the queues at SASSA service points. However, in addition to the above, the following has been introduced since April 2021:

• • The staff complement available at local offices is managed according to prevailing lockdown levels and COVID protocols. Under lockdown level 1, most offices, where there is adequate space to ensure safe social distancing, are now functioning with 75% of the staff complement or more present on any specific day. Rotation is still exercised, to limit exposure of the staff to the virus, and also to ensure that there is staff available to ensure business continuity in the event of positive cases amongst staff or their direct family members;

• • Progressive opening of service points, where the health and safety protocols are followed. Service points take pressure off local offices, particularly in provinces such as Western Cape which has only 16 local offices. However, the re-opening of service points can only be done in collaboration with the local authorities, as SASSA has to ensure that all safety protocols are followed;

• • Applicants for older persons grants, child support grants and foster child grants are encouraged to apply for the grants online, if they have access to the internet and are able to do so. The increased use of the online platform will reduce pressure on the local offices, and reduce the time that applicants have to wait in queues. SASSA continues to work to improve the functionality of this platform, and will progressively add additional services which can be done online, as well as extend it to the other grant types.

The situation will continue to be monitored closely and corrective actions implemented where necessary. Continued education and communication is absolutely critical, as it is not acceptable for citizens to sleep outside SASSA offices overnight in an effort to access services.