Listen guys, there comes a big news from South Africa. There was a huge blunder made by the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) due to which more than 140 million rands got lost i.e. more than 14 crore rupees. Now, they have also blamed the Department of Home Affairs for it. What turns out now is that SASSA disbursed grant money to about seventy-five thousand people already dead. All within a year. So, let me break everything into simple terms before the workings of the mistake, what made it happen, and what is being changed now to fix it.
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SASSA’s blunder exposed
The issue came to light a week ago after SASSA presented the audit plan for 2023/24 to the Social Development Committee in Parliament. The CEO of SASSA at that time was Busisiwe Mamela who has been suspended now pending an investigation. During that meeting, SASSA CFO Tsakareeva Chauke had to answer for this ball drop. He said that the correct information about the deaths was not received from Home Affairs on time, which led to this mess. This is no small matter of Rs 14 crore waste of the public funds.
How were the 140 million lost?
Now let’s realize how this much money was wasted. SASSA creates every month a payment file for social grants prepared from the SOCPEN database. This file is created at the beginning of the month, and money is sent on the payment date. However, if a recipient dies by that time, he still gets the money since the database is not updated on his death. Such event occurred 75,000 times, and each instance led to a loss of payments, thus adding up to R140 million.
In 2022, there were 630,667 deaths in South Africa, about 52,555 deaths per month. Since 45% of the people were receiving SASSA grants, it was expected that about 25,277 grant recipients died each month. But 75,000 payments mean that something was massively wrong. The delay in registering death at Home Affairs compounded the problem.
A new system to end mistake
In the wake of this challenge, SASSA CFO Chauke said that a new IT system would be tested in April. This system will automatically register any deaths in the Home Affairs records concerning grant recipients, and the payment will be withdrawn accordingly. SASSA actually has linked its system with that of Home Affairs but, unfortunately, the problem is that not everyone is informing SASSA about the death of someone in their household. SASSA only realized that the particular person had died because he or she had not received a grant for at least three months. The new system should, however, reduce these mistakes.
Mistakes made by SASSA in the past
SASSA has said that it has also made great progress in curbing wrongful expenditure. Rs 1.8 billion (or R 1.8 billion), it said, was wasted in 2018/19 of wrongful spending, but it has come down to only R34.2 million in 2023/24. Chauke attributed the improvement to enhanced monitoring and training on supply chain management. Yet, the audit found some major errors nevertheless:
- R74 million to CPS: Payments made in 2018 to Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) without work.
- R316 million overpayment to CPS: The court said that this amount should be returned by CPS to SASSA.
- SRD grant fraud: R150 million wrongfully spent.
- R7.8 million overpaid on a photocopier in the Eastern Cape.
- Fraudulent payments to SASSA officials. R1.7 million mess.
This shows how there are still some loopholes in the system.
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Plans to prevent fraud and improve service
SASSA’s new acting CEO Temba Matlo said that from next year biometric verification will start for SRD grant recipients. This means that only the right people will receive the money after checking their fingerprints or something like that. Also, the system is being made such that no one can check again and again, which will reduce fraud. But there are still problems—there are long queues at SASSA offices, and there is a shortage of staff. New recruitments are being made for this. Matlo also said that they are encouraging online application so that there is no need to stand in offline queues.
Role of Home Affairs
SASSA says that the delay by Home Affairs is the main reason for this mistake. If the death registration was received on time, then 75,000 wrong payments would not have happened. Home Affairs should have given information about every death quickly, but this did not happen. Now the question is whether Home Affairs is really responsible for this, or whether SASSA’s system is weak. Both are being investigated.
Conclusion
So, friends, this was the story of the R140 million SASSA mistake. Home Affairs is accused of negligence that led to money going to people who are dead. SASSA is trying to fix this with new systems and biometric checks. Audits show improvement, but queues and staff shortages are still a problem. This is public money, so it needs to be protected. Hopefully, such mistakes will not repeated in the future, and only the right people get help. What do you think—who is more at fault?