Question NW347 to the Minister of Social Development
12 June 2023 - NW347
Arries, Ms LH to ask the Minister of Social Development
What are the reasons that grant recipients were not informed about the (a) causes of the payment delays and (b) plans that Postbank has put in place to resolve the problems?
Reply:
a) We can confirm that there are no delays for social grants payments for the month of April 2023. All SASSA grants recipients using the SASSA/Postbank gold cards that were due to be paid in April via the National Payment System (ATMs, retailers and over the counter in Post Office branches) have been paid. The payments being concluded currently are those affecting people that collect their grants in Cash Pay Point in areas that are not covered by the NPS, and there are no notable delays in those payments. The current queues visible within Post Office branches are not payment queues, but queues of beneficiaries whose SASSA card will expire end April 2023, and they are responding to the call to come forward to collect new cards. The process of collecting the new SASSA cards has been communicated extensively to beneficiaries since the beginning of this card replacement program in March 2023.
b) The Grants Payments System used by Postbank to facilitate social grants payments has been migrated to a more stable environment from in January 2023. This was done to immediately address the infrastructure-related performance issue. The migration to the cloud platform also provided improved security in the Grants Payments System and reduced downtime, given that most of the payments challenges were Information Technology system related.