It’s been a busy week for one of my least favourite ministers of all time, Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu.
At a briefing last week, she confirmed that they still have hundreds of millions of rands in outstanding grants that need to be paid to needy recipients.
She said the delays were caused by verification processes to prevent fraud and corruption.
“It is very unfortunate that we have over R700 million that’s still outstanding to be paid to our people,” she said.
“In many instances we have to keep on verifying whether people are really complying or compliant in terms of their applications and whether people were really out of jobs.
“Checking whether people deserve the money or not is a bit of a tedious situation but a necessary one.”
Please forgive me for being tired of this woman’s excuses.
Verification of recipient details is part of many people’s job description – in the public and private sector.
Yet those people just get on and do their jobs, because that is what they get paid to do.
Yet, those rules obviously do not apply to this minister and her department.
Sadly, while they mess around, ordinary people who desperately need their grant money to survive have to struggle and skarrel for their next meal and a few units of expensive electricity.
Getting back to the R700 million that must still be paid out.
In what universe is this acceptable?
We are in the middle of a pandemic, which has hit already suffering people, really hard.
Yet, this woman casually tells us that her department is sitting on R700 million that hasn’t been paid out because of “verification issues”.
SASSA has also said that it will continue with the staggered payments of social grants.
The first payment will be for older persons, followed by disability grants and then child grants.
In July, the payments of social grants will start today, 6 July.
I have to ask – would these very highly paid ministers be happy if they received their huge salaries only from the 6th of every month?
Yet, it’s OK for those getting the scraps to have to wait.
We have also been told that SASSA offices will remain open during adjusted Level 4 of the lockdown, but that they will operate with a reduced staff complement.
“Applications for social grants at all local offices will be staggered according to grant type, for instance Mondays will be for older persons, Tuesdays for disability grants, Wednesdays and Thursdays for child grant applications, and Fridays for appointments and spill over from the week,” said Zulu.
So, a department that cannot deliver any form of decent service to the most vulnerable of society with their full staff complement, is now – in the middle of a cold and vicious winter – going to operate with less staff. It boggles the mind!
As if this isn’t enough, there is also a fake poster doing the rounds on social media, lying to people about a “government phase 4 Covid-19 relief fund grant”.
The post says: “Apply for the government Phase 4 Covid-19 relief fund grant provided by the government. Hurry up, it only takes a few seconds to apply. Don’t miss this opportunity.”
This is not true!
There is no Phase 4 Covid-19 relief grant.
The special Covid-19 SRD grant ended in April 2021.
Minister Zulu has said that her department has put in a request to the National Treasury to extend the R350 Covid-19 social relief grant because many South Africans are struggling in the third wave of the virus.
However, she added that she was also conscious of the financial constraints the Treasury was going through during this time.
So basically the message is this – the government has no money. Don’t get your hopes up!
What gets to me more than anything else is that it doesn’t matter how angry, frustrated or disgusted I am with Minister Zulu, it just doesn’t matter.
It’s like water off a duck’s back.
Then to add insult to injury, she still refers to the people waiting for the unpaid R700 million as “our people”. No, Minister Zulu, you are not the same as the struggling, starving masses.
You are dikvel and the poor you and your department oversee, are worse off for it!