The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SASSA, Ms Virginia Petersen has warned that beneficiaries who still have not re-registered for their social grants will have their grants suspended from tomorrow, 1 August 2013.
"Those beneficiaries need to immediately go to a nearest SASSA office to re-register by the end of business today to retain their grants. Otherwise they will have their grants suspended and will have to come to our offices to re-apply," she cautioned.
The CEO also revealed that to date 21 million (97%) out of 21,7 Million beneficiaries were re-registered. "There is just over 3% of beneficiaries who can potentially be affected either because their re-registration was incomplete or they have simply not yet come forward to re-register"
"About 300 000 of these are incomplete re-registrations and the other 400 000 are beneficiaries have simply not come forward. These beneficiaries leave us with no option and we will have to suspend their grants if they do not come through by today," explained Ms Petersen.
SASSA has been running the re-registration process for over a year now since the campaign was first announced by the Social Development Minister, Ms Bathabile Dlamini in February last year. "We believe beneficiaries were given ample time to re-register," she added.
"Through the re-registration process, the government wanted to eliminate fraud and corruption in the social grant system, but also to change the grant experience by giving the beneficiaries a smart card to draw their grants at ATM's, shops and Pay-points" said
The CEO also expressed satisfaction at how the campaign unfolded. She hailed it "a massive success".
For further information please contact:
Paseka Letsatsi
Cell: 082 883 9969
Tel: 012 400 2000
E-mail: pasekal@sassa.gov.za
