treasury intervenes

Treasury intervenes in SASSA v Post Office social grant deadlock

After SASSA and the SA Post Office failed to come to an agreement over paying social grants, Treasury intervenes to find a solution.

treasury intervenes

SASSA and the Post Office have been in and out of parliament over the course of this week. All as time continues to tick on regarding who will be the next payment service to pay out social grants to millions of South Africans.

The ANC announced on Thursday morning that they will “intervene” to break the deadlock between the two state-run entities. The intervention comes after Scopa resolved that the National Treasury should step in to iron out issues between the pair.

“SASSA was therefore instructed to halt the advertising of the tender which was scheduled for tomorrow, 03 November 2017 to give National Treasury time to review SAPO’s capabilities to carry out the payments of social grants.

The meeting gave the National Treasury until Monday, 06 November 2017 to finalise its review on the matter. A joint meeting of the two committees will reconvene on Wednesday, 08 November 2017 for a briefing on the review by National Treasury.

We remain hopeful that the intervention of National Treasury will break the current deadlock between the two entities and that an urgent agreement can be reached on the payment of social grants as per the directive of the Constitutional Court.”

The ANC has called on the chairperson of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC), President Jacob Zuma to intervene “urgently” if National Treasury cannot finalise the matter.

The ruling party then took a somewhat surprising stance as it praised SCOPA and parliament for holding the executive accountable, especially those behind the issue of social grants.

“The interventions by these committees on the social grants payment issue is exemplary of how parliament must ensure that government never deviates from its responsibilities of providing services to the people of South Africa.

We reiterate our stance that we must develop state capacity for service delivery in order to reach our goal of a developmental state.”

While SASSA and Minister Bathabile Dlamini may not want the Post Office to pay out social grants, it seems clear that the ANC do. The party said that the outsourcing of social grants to private companies “is therefore not an option”.