Thousands of Sassa beneficiaries were left without their payments after a reported technical glitch at the Post Office. Yesterday. Departments of Communications and Digital Technologies minister Mondli Gungubele and Social Development minister Lindiwe Zulu, Postbank, thw Post Office and the South African Social Security (SASSA) apologised to social grant beneficiaries who could not access their grant last week. The Post Office said at the time that they had experienced a technical glitch that affected the payments of old age and disability grants.

TECHNICAL GLITCH CAUSED BY SYSTEMS UPGRADE

In a joint media briefing, the two departments and the agencies said the intermittent challenges were as a result of a systems upgrade. "The system challenges led to the transactions of beneficiaries resulting in ‘transaction incomplete errors’ which are common within the banking space, however normally go by unnoticed due to automated reversal functionality," Gungubele said. He added that the system challenges that affected Postbank unfortunately impacted the availability of the auto reversal functionality, resulting in some social grants beneficiaries that were due to be paid on the 5 and 6 September 2023 not receiving their grants payments on time. "We would like to reassure our social grants beneficiaries, the public and all stakeholders that the system challenges were resolved on 6 September. The Postbank system has been working optimally since then,". The Ministers also confirmed that the payment of all other social grants were paid on 7 September without any challenges.

600 000 RECIPIENTS AFFECTED

According to Minister Zulu, originally 600 000 beneficiaries ,which translates to around 10% of the 5,3 million beneficiaries that are paid their social grants via Postbank, were affected. She said that the majority of these accounts have now been corrected and clients have been able to access their money. "Postbank has completed more than 500 000 funds reversals to date, and the affected beneficiaries have gotten their social grants payments. However, it is important to acknowledge that due to the manual processes involved, the process is time consuming which has taken a longer than desirable period for clients that were impacted since last week to access their money," she said. She added that as the government, they assures social grants beneficiaries that have not yet received their grants payments will be paid their money in full. "The government wishes to profusely apologise to stakeholders in the payment value-chain for enduring these challenges. We express our gratitude for the support they provided during this time to all recipients of social grants that were affected by the technical challenges," Gungubele said, adding that Postbank and SASSA staff were in communities this week assessing progress on the payment of grants and to assist recipients who may require further guidance and assistance.