EDITORIAL: The looming pensions crisis
There’s no evidence Sassa is ready with the complex systems and infrastructure needed to disburse R140bn each month, on time, to the right people
Just last month, the Department of Social Development tabled its long-awaited and sweeping proposals for comprehensive social security reforms. Whether SA can afford these is far from clear and they need robust debate. But it seems frighteningly ironic that the department can make such far-reaching policy proposals when it is clear it cannot guarantee 17-million poor South Africans that they will continue to receive their monthly social grants come April 2017. That is when the controversial contract with a private sector provider to pay the monthly grants expires – and when the department’s own in-house agency claims it will take over the task. There has been no evidence that the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) is ready with the complex systems and infrastructure needed to ensure that the annual grant money of R140bn is paid out each month, on time, in the right amounts, to the right beneficiaries, even in SA’s remotest rural areas. And the recent highly unsatisfactory ...
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