‘600 000 beneficiaries’: Lindiwe Zulu on SASSA payment delays

Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu says about 600 000 beneficiaries were affected by the SASSA payment delays at Postbank earlier this month.

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LINDIWE ZULU APOLOGISES

The Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu has apologised to social grant beneficiaries who could not access their SASSA grants last week.

According to Zulu, about 600 000 beneficiaries (10% of the 5,3 million) that are paid their social grants via Postbank were affected last week.

“Postbank has completed more than 500 000 funds reversals to date, and the affected beneficiaries have gotten their social grants payments.”

“However, it is important to acknowledge that due to the manual processes involved, the process is time consuming which has taken a longer than desirable period for clients that were impacted since last week to access their money,” said the minister.

Zimoja reports that the government wishes to profusely apologise to stakeholders in the payment value-chain for enduring these challenges.

“We express our gratitude for the support they provided during this time to all recipients of social grants that were affected by the technical challenges.”

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SASSA PAYMENT DELAYS RESOLVED

The Departments of Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Mondli Gungubele and Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu revealed in a statement that SASSA beneficiaries were delayed payments due to Postbank’s technical glitch cause by systems upgrade.

“The system challenges led to the transactions of beneficiaries resulting in ‘transaction incomplete errors’ which are common within the banking space, however normally go by unnoticed due to automated reversal functionality,” said Gungubele.

Gungubele adds that the system challenges that affected Postbank impacted the availability of the auto reversal functionality.

This resulted in some social grants beneficiaries that were due to be paid on the 5 and 6 September 2023 not receiving their grants payments.

The departments reassured their social grants beneficiaries, the public and all stakeholders that the system challenges were resolved on 6 September and that Postbank system has been working optimally since then.

The Ministers also reveal that payments of all other social grants were paid on Thursday, 7 September without any challenges.

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