Programme Director,
The CEO of SASSA, Ms Virginia Petersen,
The Director-General of the Department of Social Development, Mr Vusi Madonsela,
The Management of SASSA
On Monday this week, we launched two research reports that reflected on the positive impact that the Child Support Grant has on children. At the launch a young woman told us her story, which was indeed very inspirational.
She is a so-called AIDS orphan who was brought up in a child-headed household by her brother. She related how once a month for a few days their lives would change for the better after a brother walked “into a building” to get some cash from the “people” in there.
That building, colleagues, was a social development building and the people there, were our staff paying people their benefits. Thus the young lady is now a dynamic, confident and successful adult and the benefits she and her brother received from us assisted in making her difficult young life a little better. She further pointed out to us that the ‘people in the building were just doing their jobs’ and she was not really sure that they knew what an impact they were making on her life and the life of others.
I would like to focus my discussions on this very topic. We should be aware that we indeed make a very big impact on the lives of people who receive social assistance payments and services from us. An older person who is destitute and stands in a queue at a South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) office is not coming to collect money. That person is coming to access a service from us in order for her life to be better. A young parent standing in a line to apply for a Child Support Grant is there so that she or he can have resources to feed a child, generally seeking some hope from us.
Colleagues, our business is therefore not about giving money, it is about changing the lives of people for the better and giving hope and support to those in society that are in most need. It is also an investment in the future of our society as we do contribute to the overall development needs of our citizens.
Colleagues, societies have always found the means to protect the vulnerable. The modern innovation, coinciding with the industrial revolution and the emergence of democratic governments all over the world, was to make this protection the duty of government. Making the protection of vulnerable people the duty of democratic government was to ensure that more people are reached, that all those who needed protection was given access to it irrespective of their class, race and gender. In essence it sought to make the playing field more level and take away the discretion that was previously held over such matters by self appointed feudal landlords and other petty power brokers who invariably favoured their own families, or those from their own villages or those who just looked like them or spoke a similar language.
I make this point because we in Social Development and SASSA are entrusted by this society to distribute the much needed benefits to those of our fellow citizens who are often quite destitute. We need to ensure that we honour that role. This means quite literally that we need to treat each and every person that comes to apply for a grant, enquire about a grant or comes to receive payment, with the outmost dignity and respect.
At an individual level this requires a mindset that will treat the resources meant for the poor and vulnerable as sacrosanct and that we should ensure that every Rand goes towards its intended beneficiaries. Within this kind of framework, we must know that when we steal money from SASSA we are literally taking money that could have fed one more infant or facilitated access to a better school for a young rural girl. This requires every individual to adopt a consciousness around service delivery that is customer centric and is filled with a sense of purpose.
This individual consciousness needs to be facilitated by the institution so that it too becomes a customer centered organisation. Colleagues, SASSA must adopt a service delivery model and ethos that is framed around customer excellence. Customer excellence and the delivering of services must be about preserving and protecting the human rights and dignity of every single person seeking our assistance.
Therefore, as you deliberate here and unpack the various projects that the CEO and senior management team will present for discussion, examine the extent to which this is contributing to a customer excellence model.
These projects must seek to make changes across the entire SASSA value chain. When we seek to improve the management of applications and approval, we must be guided by what needs to be done to ensure that customers have a dignified experience. This ranges from the kind of reception they receive at our front doors and gates, the manner in which our physical space facilitates a respectful experience to how quick we can process their application, from the moment they step into the door. It is therefore not good enough to talk about one day turn-around times but also how long did it take from the moment a person walked into our premises to the time when they concluded their application process. The computers and automation processes we seek to deploy should all intend to improve the customer experience.
Our automation plans to improve document management is also about improving the integrity of the institution and its goals. The more confidence society and government have on SASSA the more likely we are to transfer more benefits to more people. In this sense, ensuring good financial administration and the administration of social assistance is about being a customer centric organisation.
SASSA, ladies and gentlemen, is part of government’s commitment to a solidarity and human rights based society. We therefore have a responsibility to promote these principles every day. Already 15.4 million people benefit from social grants.
In conclusion, I must remind all of you that we have made a commitment in Parliament to improve the performance of SASSA by implementing its service delivery improvement plan, which covers the following:
- A business process improvement and automation of processes to expedite and secure the reliability of the document system and
- The introduction of a new payment system over a five year period to reduce disbursement costs whilst enhancing the experience of beneficiaries.
I hope that your discussions at this gathering will also focus of these and other issues I raised earlier, including the issue of the disclaimer in respect of SASSA’s financial statements. We are not doing it for ourselves but for the people of South Africa who overwhelmingly entrusted the ANC government to improve their lives for the better. We dare not fail.
I wish you fruitful discussions.
Thank you.
