The Editor

The Post

Please Publish this informative piece.

Nothing Smart About the Smart Card

My office has been inundated with complaints about unauthorised deductions that having been going off the accounts of unsuspecting social grant recipients. The meagre R1500.00 is insufficient to meet the ever escalating utility costs.

This week I accompanied a number of ailing pensioners and spent hours at the local SASSA office ensuring that the matter was resolved. For some this has become a monthly exercise. It is not only cumbersome and frustrating but it also broadens financial constraints for these individuals.

It’s outrageous to think that these senior citizens are accused of purchasing mobile airtime, using online facilities no less, when they have obvious economic restraints.

To add to the inconvenience of having to travel in public transport, officials fail to complete documentation properly which results in these seniors having to return to the facility to rectify errors, which aren’t theirs, which is an additional cost.

The greatest blunder government ever made, and they have made many, was to allow debits on this NOT SO SMART card. South Africa’s phenomenal levels of corruption doesn’t permit such advance tactics particularly amongst the elderly and innocent.

With the recent stats reflecting about forty thousand complaints lodged with SASSA, the Department of social development isn’t doing enough to remedy the situation.  SASSA must “chuck” the current service provider responsible for pension pay-outs and revert back to the conventional method. It was efficient and convenient.

Jonathan Annipen

Minority Front