Pretoria - Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini has welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) to overrule a North Gauteng High Court decision that the awarding of the tender by the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) was “illegal and invalid”.
The matter was brought by AllPay, a subsidiary of Absa, before the SCA on 15 February 2013 after a High Court judge declared the tender “illegal and invalid” but found no grounds to set the tender aside.
In its ruling delivered on Thursday, the SCA dismissed the appeal with costs.
Dlamini said the judges of the SCA vindicated the decision by SASSA to award the tender to CPS and agreed that “CPS had a solution that SASSA was entitled to have and AllPay did not”.
The minister was pleased that the implementation of the new biometric-based payment solution could proceed, and that both the Department of Social Development and SASSA could now focus on the task at hand, which was “to pay the right social grant to the right person at the right time and place”.
“It has been a long journey through which several cabinet ministers and senior government officials were branded corrupt and endured months of negative publicity, which made their integrity and that of our government questionable. Justice has been served,” said an elated Dlamini.
Dlamini had always maintained that CPS was awarded the tender purely on the basis of a good payment solution, which was to curb abuse, fraud and corruption while saving money for government.
“It was clear from the onset that the case was never about the alleged corruption but about money and corporate greed,” she said.
The department and SASSA were already reaping the rewards and to date, SASSA has been able to cancel over 100 000 social grants, with an estimated monetary value of R150 million.
In line with the requirements of the new system, the agency has re-registered over 19 million beneficiaries out of a target of 21 million. The agency pays social grants to over 16 million eligible beneficiaries throughout South Africa.
Dlamini reiterated her call to all beneficiaries to make use of the extended re-registration period to go and re-register for their social grants.
“I have taken a decision to give the remaining social grant beneficiaries who have not been able to re-register with SASSA a further 30-days grace period from now until the end of April 2013.
“I also want to assure all our older persons that their home visits will still take place as scheduled until the end of May 2013,” said Dlamini. – SAnews.gov.za
