R350 grant appeals: SASSA relying on ‘core team’ of 10 employees

The Democratic Alliance (DA) revealed on Thursday 10 December that the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has a core team of 10 staff that have been assigned to assist with the appeals process of the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grants. 

This was revealed in a Parliamentary question submitted by the DA to the Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu roughly three weeks ago. 

“That is 10 people who need to assess thousands of rejected applications,” said DA Shadow Minister of Social Development Bridget Masango. 

In the meantime SASSA has released January 2021 payment dates for the standard social grants.

10 SASSA STAFF MEMBERS DEALING WITH R350 GRANT APPEALS?

According to Zulu’s answer, which The South African has seen, there is a “core team” of 10 staff members who are driving the appeals process in addition to their other responsibilities. 

Zulu, however, said an additional 24 staff members have also been assigned to assist with the capturing and registering of appeals, while a minimum of two staff members per region has been trained to assist, taking the total to approximately 52. 

“The appeals, as with the applications, are systematically dealt with,” she said. 

Zulu went on to say that a total of 60 000 appeal emails were received, which need to be attended to by the staff. 

“To date, more than 37 000 have been registered,” Zulu said last month. 

‘NO WONDER THE APPEALS PROCESS HAS BEEN MARRED BY BACKLOGS’

Masango said millions of unemployed and poor South Africans applied for the R350 grant. Thereafter, many had been informed that their applications were rejected and rightfully began the process of appealing.

“It is now no wonder that the appeals process has been marred by backlogs of thousands of emails and phone calls. There has been no foresight at SASSA and the Department of Social Development (DSD) in bringing onboard temporary additional capacity to deal with this new function and to ensure that the appeals process is managed effectively and swiftly,” said Masango. 

“SASSA had already been operating on a skeleton staff operation for most of the year. It boggles the mind how anyone would have thought that this process would run smoothly. How can a programme that has cost billions of rands be so thinly resourced?” she added. 

WILL ALL GRANT APPLICATIONS BE PROCESSED BY THE DEADLINE? 

Masango said the revelation also casts serious concerns over SASSA’s deadline of 28 February 2021 to process all R350 grant applicants. 

“Without any additional assistance to accelerate the application process and to deal with appeals, millions of South Africans will probably never gain access to this much-needed relief,” she said. 

“The truth is, SASSA offices are under capacitated and ill-equipped to effectively deal with the existing backlog and it is up to the Department to show some leadership to address these challenges,” she added. 

When The South African contacted SASSA spokesperson Paseka Letsatsi for further comment on the matter, there was no response. Calls were also declined.