SASSA vows to recover R140m paid to dead beneficiaries

This comes after the Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu told parliament that over 70,000 dead beneficiaries received SASSA grants over the past three financial years.

Zulu was responding to a written question by DA's member of Parliament Jacques Smalle.

SASSA spokesperson Paseka Letsatsi says the late reporting of death to the Department of Home Affairs or the agency is one of the factors contributing to the release of money to people who have passed away.

"When a person is deceased, there are processes of informing the South African Social Security Agency. In this instance, we find the information from the Department of Home Affairs. However, we are in the process of ensuring that there is a live interaction between the SASSA database and the Home Affairs database so that when a person is deceased, we can get the information immediately."

Letsatsi adds that SASSA extracts payment beneficiary details and compares it with the Department of Home Affairs’ information every month.

"The key purpose is to test if the beneficiaries are still alive or deceased. This process takes place just around the 22nd / 23rd of every month. In an instance that the client is found to be deceased, such a record is deactivated on the SASSA system prior to extraction of payment – no money is generated for such clients.

"This interface process with the Department of Home Affairs, as explained, is automated, and it is executed on a monthly basis without exceptions. When a client dies at their different residential areas, the only time on which SASSA gets to know if the client has died is when family members report such death to SASSA or report such to the Department of Home Affairs."

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