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Social Development Minister Susan Shabangu (Photo by GCIS)
Net1 companies providing social grants are deceiving recipients to maintain their market share, Social Development Minister Susan Shabangu said Tuesday. subsidies.
Social Development Minister Susan Shabangu was almost an hour late for the press conference she held with the National Union of Education, Health and Allied Workers (Nehawu) Tuesday.
When she arrived, she had harsh words for Net1 companies, whose affiliates include outgoing cash grant provider, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), and a number of subsidiaries offering financial products to recipients . "
I think they're trying to expand their reach because the intent is not to disappear," Shabangu said about Net1 companies
In 2014, the Constitutional Court said that the contract of CPS with the South African Social Security Agency (Sbada) was invalid and after years of delays, Sbada now works with the Post Office SA (SAPO) to set up a new cash payment system.
She stated that Net1 companies were not honest.
" They are cheating on them," she said, reiterating Sbada's complaint that Net1 is trying to market its EasyPay Everywhere green card and misleading the beneficiaries who want to sign up for the new card SAPO Gold, who
Shabangu said that Net1 companies "were trying to recover" their share of beneficiaries, while Sbada encourages grant recipients to enroll in SAPO cards. " We will not leave this particular space unattended."
Net1 has been criticized for using the CPS contract to market other financial products and unjustly benefit unsuspecting consumers. Companies have vigorously denied the charges and the Constitutional Court decided in 2017 that deductions can be deducted from such accounts for services such as loans, airtime and electricity.
Net1 responded by saying that recipients can use any payment channel, whether via SAPO, Easypay Everywhere or another financial institution. EasyPay accounts are underwritten by Grindrod Bank, which risks losing millions of customers
" CPS and Grindrod Bank continue to serve grant beneficiaries who have retained their Sbada / Grindrod cards or who have EasyPay Everywhere cards, "Net1 commented last week.
" There have been reports where SAPO cardholders have attempted to use the payment infrastructure to access their grants, but these transactions have failed. " [19659009] We badume that these failures relate to the technical problems mentioned in the media. "
Shabangu apologized on Tuesday for flaws in the payment of subsidies in July while Sbada and SAPO launched the new payment system. She said that they were not prepared for rapid adoption in the new system, with 1.3 million beneficiaries already exchanging their cards.About 2.5 million beneficiaries receive payments in species.
" Similar experiments like this one should not happen again. This is not the standard we want for our beneficiaries, "said Minister Sbada anticipates that all cash beneficiaries will have enrolled in the new SAPO card by the end of August, before the end of the CPS contract at the end of September.
" We are very confident that the next round of payment will allow us to have a good system," she added.
Shabangu spoke after meeting with Nehawu's leaders to improve the relationship between Sbada and his workers during the transition period.
" We all know that Sbada comes from a particular past and that he There were challenges facing the workers of Sbada and we say that these challenges must be problems of the past, "said the minister
.was recently raising red flags on how his members are treated in Sbada at my ure that the new payment system is deployed. In April, the union declared that members were forced to perform tasks outside their duties and threatened with letters of suspension if they refused.
"As Nehawu, we will not bend our arms while our members will pay for the clumsiness of former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini and his acolytes who did everything in their power to maintain in place the illegal and invalid CPS contract, "he said at the time.
Nehawu and Sbada agreed Tuesday to form a task force to iron out discrepancies and report back within a month. [19659005] " The key is what we do as Sbada on the ground. Some beneficiaries remained stranded last week while 700,000 people who had registered for the new payment card could not access their money due to technical problems and high demand.
Sbada said he worked closely with the banking sector to solve the problems and more than 72 percent of the beneficiaries accessed their grants, many in the remaining 28 percent not rushing to withdraw their money first. week of payment.
While the grievors complained of long queues and delays in trying to register for the new system, Shabangu claimed that queues were a common feature the day where the subsidies were paid. The change could continue to be hindered by a strike at SAPO.
The Union of Communication Workers (CWU) is on strike at SAPO, impacting post offices across the country. The union wants a salary of 10% while SAPO offers only 6%.
Sbada recently managed to avoid a potentially crippling strike by the Association of Public Servants (PSA) after the Labor Court ordered the resumption of negotiations. table. Salary negotiations with Shabangu, Minister of Finance and Minister of the Civil Service and Administration, will resume on July 12.
To ease the burden of his systems, Sbada argued that beneficiaries should not queue in the early hours of the day. first day of each month.
" They do not have to submit to the adverse weather conditions we are experiencing and they must avoid the congestion that happens at the beginning of each month," said the agency last week. DM
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