Question NW1658 to the Minister of Social Development
19 September 2016 - NW1658
Masango, Ms B to ask the Minister of Social Development
(a) How many complaints have been received regarding on going illegal deductions from social grants since she banned such deductions in May 2016, (b) what was the nature of the specified complaints and (c) what action did she take to (i) investigate and (ii) solve the specified complaints?
Reply:
(a) 44 142 complaints have been received and 38 357 were since resolved and blocked not to allow any further deductions from recurring. Five
thousand seven hundred and eighty five (5 785) of these cases have been refunded to the beneficiaries.
(b) The nature of the complaints is airtime, electricity and loan deductions.
(c) (i) and (ii) SASSA developed and implemented a Dispute Resolution Mechanism as a recourse system to deal with the rising number of deductions against social grants. The Dispute Resolution Mechanism has a built-in Communication Strategy that focuses on beneficiary education and awareness. In addition to this system, a Ministerial Task Team was established to play a monitoring, oversight and also propose interventions to deal with this challenge. This system has since reflected and improvement in dealing with this.