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A presentation by the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to the portfolio committee on social development has revealed an array of serious problems within the institution, including wasteful expenditure, fraud and the awarding of social grants to the deceased, to companies and to dormant bank accounts. The SASSA holds a crucial position in the social development apparatus in South Africa, as it is charged with ensuring the efficient and effective management and administration of social grants. Unfortunately, all the evidence suggest it is not meeting these requirements, and the Democratic Alliance (DA) will be posing parliamentary questions to the social development department to monitor what is being done to rectify these problems. SASSA was criticised by the Auditor-General for irregular expenditure of R64 million for the year ending 31 March 2008. The Auditor General further identified fraud as a major problem for SASSA. The Auditor General's report for 2008/2009 found several shortcomings with SASSA's process in distributing the Social Relief Distress grant to the intended beneficiaries:
• Documentation critical to the application for grants was not complete;
• It could not be confirmed in all instances that the correct person received the correct amount of relief aid at the correct time and place;
• Effective controls in respect of food vouchers and aid purchased to be distributed were not implemented;
• Beneficiary applications were captured offline which could have resulted in unnoticed erroneous duplication of payments;
• Distribution of relief aid was not performed in a standardised or consistent manner in all provinces;
• Supply chain management requirements were not adhered to in the procurement of relief aid.
SASSA has done well in some respects. SASSA brought 3,930 new fraud cases to court and 3,605 of the accused were convicted. 9,911 fraudsters have so far signed acknowledgements of debt valued at R50,2m. However, SASSA must do more to improve its payment services and ensure the right people are getting social grants. It is shocking that thousands of rands are being paid into dormant accounts while people are in need of them. In May 2007, 60,000 dormant accounts were identified by Standard Bank and ABSA. In addition there were 39,000 accounts with unclaimed benefits and 250,000 failed bank accounts, where details of the beneficiary did not match that of the account holder. The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) found that of the 39,000 beneficiaries that had not claimed benefits, 10% were already deceased. The DA believes there should be a system in place where death certificates can be obtained by SASSA so that it can ensure that these accounts are no longer awarded grants. The SIU also found that some accounts had non identifiable ID documents and some were listed on the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office. We can only deduce from this that grants are inadvertently being awarded to companies instead of individuals that are actually in need of them. There are so many people that are malnourished and disadvantaged in South Africa and they should be the priority in terms of receiving these social grants. The DA will now ask the Minister of Social Development:
• What steps the government will take to ensure that SASSA awards the right social grants to the right person
• What steps the government will be implementing to ensure fraud is minimised and that money is being recovered.
• What steps the government will take to ensure that wasteful expenditure is eliminated within SASSA