SASSA sees decline of more than 400k in paid out social grants

There’s been an overall decline in the number of social grants being paid out by more than 400,000 over the last year.
 
This has in part been ascribed to fraud interventions employed by the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to root out unworthy recipients, double-dippers and ghost beneficiaries.
 
Presenting its annual performance plan to Parliament on Wednesday, SASSA CEO Themba Matlou sketched a futuristic agency that he said would, in the coming years, offer beneficiaries a customer experience, akin to a bank.
  
SASSA said its modernisation process is on track and it's processing more applications electronically.
 
An electronic queue management system is also being deployed at more of its offices to deal with the historically long queues.
 
As it moves to a paperless environment, Matlou said almost 70% of its records have now been digitised, with the remainder to be completed by the second quarter of this financial year.
 
“This process will take a bit long. But it’s actually good for the organisation because we are bringing efficiency that in the long term will definitely benefit the beneficiaries.”
 
Matlou said the review of beneficiaries has so far saved the agency R44 million a month.
 
“We have scaled up the social grant review, which is to make sure that only those who are eligible receive the grant. That’s why a lot of them have been offloaded from the system.”
 
The most significant declines in beneficiaries since the SASSA review of beneficiaries have been recorded for child support and foster care grants.