AN INQUIRY MANDATED BY THE Constitutional Court into whether Social Development minister Bathabile Dlamini should be held personally liable for legal fees in the grants crisis, turned up at least one unassailable truth: only after reading Noseweek did Dlamini realise that there was a serious problem with her department’s planning programme.
This admission by Dlamini, (who elected to speak in Zulu through a translator) was made to the inquiry panel headed by retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe at the Office of the Chief Justice in Midrand, Johannesburg.
In July 2016 Noseweek forecast that the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) intended to miss the key 1 April 2017 deadline to migrate grant payments away from Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), a subsidiary of the US-based Net1 Group. The plan at the time was that payments would be moved in-house to the agency.
The CPS contract had already been ruled invalid in a 2014 Constitutional Court judgment, but was due to end only on 31 March 2017. The April 2017 deadline set by the ConCourt was to allow SASSA time to call for new tenders from private contractors or find an alternative solution. The court knew it had to avoid jeopardising the monthly payment of 17 million grants for child support, pensions and disability, totalling R11 billion a month.
Key questions that have persistently stewed in this scandal were:
l Why did the minister, in addition to SASSA’s own planning staff, set up parallel, unregulated so-called workstreams at huge cost – R40m – to handle the migration?
Denne historien er fra March 2018-utgaven av Noseweek.
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Denne historien er fra March 2018-utgaven av Noseweek.
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