Sassa scraps minister’s advisory teams
Sassa CEO culls the failed ‘work streams’, meant to come up with solutions to dysfunctional welfare system, as the Post Office waits in the wings to take over the contract
The South African Social Services Agency (Sassa) has scrapped the advisory groups that were set up to plan for the future of the country’s more than $11bn (about R148.5bn) of annual welfare payments. Letters were sent to the so-called "work streams" last week informing them of their termination, Sassa CEO Thokozani Magwaza said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Joburg office on Monday. Magwaza said he had informed Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini of the decision and had not yet received a response. The advisory groups reported directly to the minister, effectively creating parallel structures to the agency’s management. The government is pushing to find a new system to pay welfare grants to more than 17-million recipients after the Constitutional Court in March allowed for a 12-month extension to the contract with Net1 UEPS Technologies, after earlier finding the deal was invalid. Any interruption to the programme could spark protests in poor communities where many househo...
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