By Akani Nkuna
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) CEO, Themba Matlou, said on Thursday that 70,000 grants had been suspended after a review of 240,000, attributing the suspensions to beneficiaries’ failure to undergo reviews in the current financial year.
He said the agency was intensifying its efforts to complete 420,000 reviews.
The review process, he said at a media briefing in Cape Town, enables SASSA to assess beneficiaries’ eligibility, ensure grants are awarded to qualifying applicants, and determine whether recipients’ financial circumstances have improved since they were awarded assistance. Following the review, SASSA either continues payments or suspends the grant.
“As we committed last year that we will put measures to ease this process in local offices, we have implemented key innovations during this period such as the rollout of compulsory biometric enrolment for all new social grant applications, we also implemented life certification for identified beneficiaries, and the review of targeted beneficiary groups,” said Matlou.
“Going forward, SASSA will progressively make the social grant review process available through self-service platforms to improve accessibility, efficiency, and convenience for beneficiaries.”
Matlou said SASSA continues to receive high volumes of applications every month, amounting to more than seven million, and that the figure rises to between eight and nine million when reviews and verification processes are included. He said this ultimately translates into about 28 million people relying on monthly social grants.
He added that 45% of South Africans depend on social grants.
He said that SASSA’s systems were designed to accommodate as many qualifying people as possible to ensure the agency fulfils its mandate.
“SASSA pays almost 19 million beneficiaries on the normal social grant, that would be the statistics that every month we are dispersing. We also have social relief of distress grants that pay as a temporary grant,” he said.
Matlou said the reviews help prevent payments to deceased beneficiaries, detect fraud, secure public funds, and protect the integrity of the social grants system while sustaining support for qualifying recipients.
He urged beneficiaries to keep SASSA informed of changes in their financial circumstances to remain compliant, warning that non-compliance could undermine the system. He also said the review process had generated substantial savings.
“The social grant review process is an important step not only to safeguard the integrity of the social assistance programme but to also ensure that public funds are directed to those who need them most including reducing level of fraud and misuse of public funds,” said Matlou.
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“This process has saved government approximately R44 million per month….”
To strengthen enforcement against non-compliance and fraud, Matlou called for closer collaboration and data-sharing across government institutions, including NSFAS and SARS, as well as banks, to identify irregularities more quickly.
He said that, through joint operations with other government bodies, SASSA had identified more than 290,500 people across various payroll systems who appeared to be ineligible for social grants, and that the agency was working to contact them for review.
“SASSA also progressed with the strengthening of its collaboration and relationship with be banks on conducting the means testing process through Memorandums of Agreement,” he added.
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