Question NW1863 to the Minister of Social Development
30 May 2022 - NW1863
Abrahams, Ms ALA to ask the Minister of Social Development
With reference to the development of a new queue management system that her department announced during the meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Social Development on 20 April 2022 to address the ongoing crisis of vulnerable beneficiaries of the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) sleeping outside SASSA offices throughout the Republic, (a) how will the new SASSA queue management system function, (b) on what date is it envisaged to be operationalised and implemented, (c) what is the cost involved in setting up the new queue management system, (d) how is the system expected to solve the ongoing queue crisis and prevent beneficiaries from sleeping over outside at SASSA offices and (e) how is the system expected to assist SASSA beneficiaries who do not have financial resources to travel back and forth to SASSA offices?
Reply:
a) The queue management system is a ticketing system, which identifies the services that an applicant would like to access and then issues a corresponding ticket to the applicant. The person is then able to sit anywhere in the office and wait for his/her ticket number to be called. This will do away with the current process where queues are managed through shifting positions on chairs, resulting in people being too scared to leave their chair they are sitting on, in fear of losing their place in the queue. It will also prevent those who take advantage of people queuing, by selling them priority places in the queue.
By using this system, the local offices will accurately be able to confirm the numbers of people served in any one day, the actual services they provided and also empower the local office manager to intervene when there are blockages by assigning staff to where the most pressure is.
b) As per our Annual Performance Plan for 2022/23, the queue management system will be piloted in 2 local offices in each of the 9 regions (provinces) – 18 offices in total; after which it will be progressively rolled out to all local offices, in accordance with available resources. Implementation depends on the procurement of hardware such as computers, monitors, tablets, ticket printers and a loudspeaker system.
c) The cost is estimated to be between R170 000 to R200 000 per site for rolling out the required infrastructure. This will vary depending on the size and layout of the application sites.
d) and (e) The queue management system is not directly intended to address the overcrowding of offices and the need to access the queues early. SASSA is currently also considering and piloting various online systems, which will reduce demand for accessing the physical premises and to allocate timeslots / bookings to applicants.