WATCH | Postbank cannot guarantee grant payment delays won’t hit again

The management of Postbank cannot guarantee social grant beneficiaries will not experience delayed payments again after the entity “upgraded” its payment system, only for 600,000 beneficiaries to spend days waiting for their payments. 

South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) grants for elderly recipients were supposed to be paid last Tuesday and disability grants last Wednesday, but thousands of the beneficiaries did not receive payments because of technical difficulties experienced by Postbank.   

Postbank CEO Nikki Mbengashe, briefing the media on Thursday, attributed the delays to an “upgrade” in the payment system services the bank made this month. This upgrade, however, did not perform as planned and 600,000 beneficiaries’ payments were declined on payday. 

“It was not the first change we have made. It just so happened that this one did not happen as planned. There were relevant tests done.

“We have a commitment as executives of the bank to ensure that something like this does not happen again, but with my experience at the bank and having managed IT, things like this do happen. I cannot stand here with an understanding of how technology works and say 100% something like this will never happen again,” Mbengashe said.

Mbengashe said the only commitment she could make was that the bank would work hard to prevent payment system failure.

Minister of communications and digital technologies Mondli Gungubele said after the systematic errors Postbank had to do a manual process to ensure beneficiaries received their payments. This further delayed the payments for several days. 

“Originally this affected approximately 600,000 beneficiaries, which translates to around 10% of the 5.3-million beneficiaries that are paid their social grants via Postbank’s Sassa gold cards monthly. 

“Postbank has completed more than 500,000 fund reversals to date, and the affected beneficiaries have got 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,” Gungubele said.

Gungubele was confident that the majority of grant beneficiaries were paid their money by Thursday afternoon and only a few hundred people were yet to be paid.

A visit by TimesLIVE to a post office in Marshalltown which earlier this week had winding queues, painted a different picture on Thursday, as the queues had significantly decreased.

Hundreds of beneficiaries came from different parts of Johannesburg seeking help at the Marshalltown Post Office but were forced to beg for money to go home when their monthly grants were not paid.

Sapo officials had no clue how to help hungry pensioners who waited for many hours, only to be told “there is no money” in their accounts. Adding further woes was the load-shedding which had hit the offices at 2pm, halting all operations. 

Some of the beneficiaries who had been there earlier in the week confirmed to TimesLIVE on Thursday afternoon that they received their payments late on Tuesday and others on Wednesday morning. 

Gungubele confirmed that beneficiaries receiving grants via banks were not affected and only those using Sassa gold cards were impacted. Most people using the gold cards are elderly people and they had to endure the agonising wait this week, he added.    

TimesLIVE