SASSA will have full report on alleged mass SRD grant fraud in 30 days

John Perlman speaks with Paseka Letsatsi, SASSA Spokesperson

Listen below.

Two first year computer science students at Stellenbosch University claim to have discovered massive flaws in SASSA’s Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant system.

When looking at the system they saw that there were 74,931 SRD grant applications for people born in February 2005.

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According to Statistics South Africa, there were 82,097 births in this period, meaning the grant application rate is 91%.

Similar findings could be seen for all people born between 2002 and 2006.

They also found that SASSA had paid grants to people using their ID numbers even though they had never applied.

They conducted an on-campus survey of 60 people to measure fraud.

58 had active grant applications for the SRD grant on the SASSA system, but 56 of them had never applied.

This means 56 out of 58 applications were fraudulent.

Letsatsi says SASSA will thoroughly investigate these claims and will have a report within 30 days.

He adds that they have flagged 2.5 million suspicious applications showing their system can pick up issues.

“We are not saying they have committed fraud, but something is amiss with the applications.”

- Paseka Letsatsi, SASSA Spokesperson

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