The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has been summoned to Parliament to account for the alleged corruption involving the R350 Social Relief of Distress Grant. This comes after two first-year computer science students from Stellenbosch University claimed to have uncovered fraud including unexplained applications and payments.
SASSA TO ANSWER TO PARLIAMENT
Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Social Development, Bridget Masango said in an interview on Cape Talk, a radio station, that the committee was shocked by the student's findings and that they have summoned Sassa to answer to the allegations next week Wednesday. "We have called Sassa to come next week and answer to this. We have also invited the two young gentlemen to come to explain to us in layman's terms what this shocking report is saying," Masango said. She added that as the portfolio committee, they have had to move a presentation that was supposed to take place on October 23 so that Sassa could come through to Parliament to answer to the corruption allegations.
WHAT THE STUDENTS DISCOVERED
In an article on GroundUp, the students, Joel Cedras and Veer Gosai said they discovered that Sassa's SRD computer system is insecure and allows anyone to rapidly read massive numbers of records without any authentication. They also said that the system shows that over 90% of people born in February 2005 have applied for the grant. Cedra and Gosai also said that they surveyed 60 people they knew and found that 58 of them had active grant applications for the R350 grant on the system but 56 of them never applied for the grant themselves. "We also checked the first 500 male and 500 female IDs of people born on 1 January from 1960 to 2006. On average the SRD application rate was 52% for all of the years but when looking at people born between 2002 and 2006, the application rate was about 90%. It's simply not possible that this was done legitimately," the pair said. The students also discovered that their IDs were used to apply for the grant and payments are being made monthly yet they have never received the money. "The scale of the fraud is likely large. Not only is the publicly funded social grant system being looted, but it is likely that many legitimate potential recipients of the SRD grant are not getting paid," they said.
NOTHING NEW
In a statement, Sassa said the fraud highlighted by the two students where fraudsters steal the identity of ordinary citizens and their contact details is not something new and is well-known to them. "Over time, the risk landscape has evolved, necessitating Sassa to adapt accordingly. Sassa has implemented several countermeasures, including algorithms based on data and metadata to identify potentially fraudulent applications that require further identity verification. These measures recognise that 60% of South African youth are unemployed and could qualify for the grant," the agency's Paseka Letsatsi said. He added that the agency is also already in the process of rolling out enhanced security measures for all SRD-related functions as part of the rollout of a new mobile app. Social Development Minister Sisisi Tolashe said she has called an urgent meeting with Sassa executives today to deal with the alleged data security breach within the social grant system. "The country will be updated in due course on this matter," Tolashe's department said in a short statement.
