Pensioner told to come back a fourth time as Pule hears grant deduction complaints in Delft

A Delft pensioner has now tried four times to stop a funeral cover deduction she says she never agreed to, and on Monday she put the problem directly to the Social Development Minister in the queue at her local SASSA office.

As CapeTown ETC reported on 22 September, Christine Southgate was one of about a dozen grant beneficiaries who spoke to Minister Dina Pule and SASSA CEO Themba Matlou during an oversight visit to the agency’s Delft office. Southgate told the minister that Emerald Life has been deducting money from her pension since March, that she does not recall signing up for the policy, and that the deductions have left her unable to cover her water and electricity bills. She already has burial cover through her church.

The visit was part of Pule’s programme of unannounced inspections at SASSA offices, where she has said she wants to hear directly from beneficiaries and staff rather than from reports. She asked officials at the Delft office how many people they had helped by 12:30 and was told more than 100. She said she would bring in more officials to help.

The detail matters because of what it says about the size of the administrative problem. SASSA pays social grants to more than 19 million beneficiaries every month, and a deduction against a grant is not a small irritation for the person on the receiving end. For an older person on the older persons grant, which is R2,190 a month from October, a funeral policy premium of even R100 or R150 is money that does not reach the electricity meter or the grocery till.

The legal position is straightforward. Deductions from social grants for funeral cover are permitted only where the beneficiary has given informed, written consent. Where consent was never given, or where a beneficiary cannot get a deduction stopped after repeated visits, the problem is not the size of the deduction. It is that the system is not producing a remedy.

Southgate left the Delft office without being assisted on Monday, though she said a SASSA official took her details and promised to follow up.

Other beneficiaries at Delft raised deductions for Clientele Life policies. The company has asked for their details so the cases can be investigated. The pattern of complaints is not new to SASSA. Deductions for funeral cover sold at or near grant pay points have been a recurring source of complaint for years, and the agency has previously tightened the rules on who may sell what at its offices.

Pule also heard praise. Some beneficiaries at Delft spoke about positive experiences at the office, particularly the friendliness of SASSA staff. Others raised concerns about long queues, insufficient toilets and the value of the grants themselves, with some asking the minister to increase them. Pule encouraged officials to keep up what she called their good work, noting the volume of people they handle daily.

The most concrete complaints about waiting came from SASSA’s Bellville office, which Pule had visited more than a month earlier. At that visit, staff raised problems with a slow biometric verification system being piloted there and with staff shortages.

On Monday, beneficiaries at Bellville told GroundUp that they were still making repeated trips and waiting hours. Rachel Lott of Elsies River arrived at 07:00 for help with a disability grant and found people already waiting outside. She said she has been visiting the office since May without resolution, and that old people and children should not have to stand in the cold early in the morning. Nathan Jordan said he arrived at about 05:10 and described waiting outside against the walls as inappropriate for elderly people. It was his second visit for help with an old age grant.

Not everyone at Bellville was unhappy. Naomi Basson, who applied for a pension last month and was given an appointment date to return, said she was helped that morning and that the service was good. Christabel De Jager said the queue was moving faster than on her previous visits.

The test of Monday’s visit will be whether the cases taken down at Delft are actually resolved, and whether the staffing and system problems raised at Bellville in the previous visit have moved. SASSA has not said when it will respond to the individual deduction complaints, and the follow-up promised to Southgate has not yet produced an outcome.

Source: CapeTown ETC, SASSA: Pensioners complain to minister about deductions from their grants