The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) is responsible for distributing grants and allowances to disadvantaged people.
Recipients of SASSA grants will receive their grants this week. SASSA confirmed the grant payment dates for the year recently.
SASSA beneficiaries can receive their payments form selected supermarkets, such as Pick n Pay, Boxer, U-save merchants, Checkers and Shoprite, and obtain this through their SASSA card, CashSend, or by getting the amount directly transferred into their bank account.
According to the agency, payments will be made on:
- Tuesday January 3- old age grants;
- Wednesday January 4- disability grants; and
- Thursday January 5- all other grants will be paid from this date, including the children’s grant and the R350 SRD grant.
Meanwhile, Postbank has advised all SASSA grant beneficiaries that ATM withdrawals using the gold cards have been suspended for December only.
This comes as a number of beneficiaries (old age, disabled and children) could not access their grants on the specified payment dates for both November and December.
In a statement, Postbank said it had been experiencing a number of technical glitches that disrupted the smooth withdrawal of social grants. It added that an investigation has uncovered a series of network attacks by criminal elements determined to commit systematic ATM card fraud related crimes on Postbank payments suing sophisticated modus operandi.
“As a mitigating exercise, and in consultation with our partners following the resurgence of these criminal activities at the inception of the December payments, it has become necessary that Postbank suspends SASSA grants withdrawal at ATMs for those clients using the Postbank SASSA gold cards,” the state-owned bank said.
Postbank further advised beneficiaries using the Postbank issued gold cards to withdraw their social grant monies at any retail outlet nationwide that provides cashback functionality such as Shoprite, Checkers, USave, Pick n Pay and Boxer.
Source: The South African, Bursaries South Africa, South African Government, Times Live, image from Twitter: @fscentralnews