The September payment cycle started smoothly this past Saturday besides the eagerness that came with it, given the fact that the South African Post Office would be paying a far bigger number of beneficiaries as compared to previous months.
This payment cycle happen simultaneously with the card swapping exercise where beneficiaries have to swap the old card for the new gold SASSA card. This situation has resulted in enthusiastic beneficiaries standing in sometimes long queues for the new card which takes less than three minutes to be issued.
To deal with the issue of long queues and instances relating to dignity service as well as equipment issues in the branches interventions have been made to turn the situation around in the long term. The system’s stability and performance is commendable as it performs above the industry standards.
To increase capacity at branches, employees performing the non-critical functions have been deployed to branches and pay points to support and thereby improve the level of service delivery. To improve communications, the nerve centre for Management information system’ has been enhanced
Since the upgrade of the SAPO back end IT infrastructure, a very successful August payment cycle was realised and 2,5m beneficiary to the total value of R3,2bn were paid through various channels in which all transactions were 100% successful. The SAPO branch infrastructure upgrade is underway to capacitate SAPO to effectively service the grant beneficiaries. Lastly in sites where there’s lack of connectivity due
to cable theft, SAPO has roped in Telkom to urgently address the matters.
As at the 3rd September, 7,4m transaction to the total value of R4,4bn were done against the allocated R6,5bn on all 5,4m beneficiary accounts. This means that approximately 70% of all payments for this month had been done by 03 September. The major problem encountered by some of the beneficiaries is forgetting their PIN’s which will necessitate a PIN reset. In case of a PIN reset, a beneficiary has to visit their nearest SASSA office for assistance and thereafter they can be able to access their funds. Beneficiaries can also call 0800 60 10 11 toll free for any type of query.
