Take nothing for granted
Sassa’s R2bn funeral insurance rip-off
Sassa’s management of R2bn/year of funeral insurance business is not a bad idea — if it can build internal capacity
Yet again we’ve been reminded of just how awkward a liability social development minister Bathabile Dlamini is for her department as it battles to resolve the overwhelming difficulties with social grant distribution. Horror at the prospect of the department and the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) managing "26A deductions" — third-party deductions from social grants for funeral insurance — reflects the growing perception that Dlamini is in cahoots with a shadowy force determined to extract a portion of the hefty profits made on social grant distribution. The fear is that by allowing the department to manage the estimated R2bn/year of funeral insurance business, more scope is provided for carving out a slice of these profits. The DA’s Lindy Wilson says the funeral insurance proposal has come up before. "Up to now it has been ignored, but Sassa recently issued a request for information to deal with it and [is] thought to be in negotiations with someone, but we don’t know who," says W...
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