By Staff Reporter
TZANEEN-A week after the old age grant was supposed to be paid out, thousands of recipients have still not been able to get their money.
This follows a technical glitch last week that left thousands of grant recipients out of pocket. The problem affected people who receive their grants via SASSA and Postbank cards.
According to Democratic Alliance many beneficiaries have been sleeping outside grant sites, unable to pay the taxi fare home. Some pensioners are still walking to and from ATMs, SASSA offices and Post Office branches daily.
The glitches affected beneficiaries with SASSA gold cards. This despite the fact that cards’ expiry dates have been to December 2023 as SASSA and the Postbank failed to renew the gold cards timeously
The DA has also stated that the Postbank is currently not renewing any gold cards even though beneficiaries only have four months left in which to receive their new cards and no indication from Postbank or SASSA on whether the expiry dates would be extended yet again.
Some recipients have received their grants, some have received a portion of their grants, and some have not received any money at all.
The Postbank has indicated SASSA gold card holders can access their grant via the South African Post Offices. However, many SAPO branches have closed down across the country due to ANC government incompetence, leaving the few open SAPO branches overwhelmed in the current situation.
This is at least the fourth system failure since SASSA took over grant distribution from the Post Office in October last year.
According to spokesperson Bongani Diako, Postbank experienced a system challenge on Tuesday 5 September, which affected SASSA and Postbank card holders trying to access their grants. The system was “brought back up” the next morning.
On Saturday, Postbank said in a statement that all grants had been allocated into recipients’ accounts. But on Monday, Diako said that of 180,000 affected transactions, 150,000 cases had been resolved and that the remaining cases would be resolved in the coming day.
