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On Friday, the DA received a petition with over 2 000 signatures from Tembisa community members during an oversight visit to the makeshift offices of the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) at Rabasotho and the Civic Centre Library in Kempton Park. We will ensure that petition is tabled in Parliament and will also invite the Minister of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, to visit the community with the DA in order to listen to their genuine concerns.

SASSA and the Department of Social Development have become an increasing frustration to the vulnerable people in South Africa dependent on their grants to put food on their tables. The DA has written to both Minister Zulu, and the SASSA CEO, Busisiwe Memela-Khambula, countless times to no avail. While they both live in luxury, those in their care have to suffer through freezing wind and rain, hunger and increasing travel costs just to try and survive.

The conditions in which vulnerable South Africans are expected to apply for vital social grants are simply shocking. The DA found that the while the library might have been suitable as a stand-in office when a DA Councillor found the space as a temporary measure to assist SASSA beneficiaries in 2011, the space has since become too small to cater for the rising numbers of people dependent on social grants. And in the decade since SASSA was evicted from its office in Kempton Park, little seems to have been done on the part of the Agency to find a new permanent address from which to help the community.

There is very little observance of Covid-19 regulations to protect beneficiaries or staff from contracting the virus with no screens between the temporary workstations that have to be set-up afresh every morning.

The office where the assessments for beneficiaries of disability grants are done, is too small to adequately cater for social distancing and it has no ventilation.

Vulnerable people are also forced to queue outside in the freezing cold while they hope to be assessed that day, with no guarantee that they will be helped as the systems are regularly down.

This while reports on Friday stated that many disability grant recipients have not received their grants since the beginning of the year as their temporary grants lapsed in December 2020 and the re-application and assessment process are taking too long. This is in part due to SASSA offices not running at full capacity due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

And while an online booking platform was launched in June for beneficiaries to book appointments for assessments, too many vulnerable South Africans are still struggling for their applications to be approved in order to receive their grants.

It is not just in Tembisa where people have to beg and borrow money in order to travel to their closest SASSA office, only to be shown the door after a whole day of queueing.

The DA hopes that the Minister and CEO heed the petition of the Tembisa community. It is time they improved each and every SASSA outpost. They need to ensure that vulnerable people are safe and secure when they apply for their various grants, as well as when they receive them.

Issued by The DA