- BlackSash conducted a review on Sassa grant access in Athlone, highlighting concerns such as long wait times and limited facilities.
- Many residents arrive as early as 3:00, facing safety risks.
- Community discussions addressed possible improvements in service efficiency and security for grant recipients.
BlackSash have completed its Community Based Monitoring (CBM) around the payment of Sassa grants in the Athlone area.
With several paypoints available, including banks, a Sassa office, retail outlets and a post office, officials say residents from Athlone, Bonteheuwel and Mitchells Plain use the paypoints to access their grants.
In conjunction with the Athlone District Advice Office, the CBM sought to understand the movements, safety and access to grants.
At a community dialogue session hosted at the Advice Office premises in Kewtown on Thursday 24 October, Zoleka Ntuli, Paralegal fieldworker for BlackSash, said the CBM aims to ensure no one’s rights are violated and that grants are issued as they should be.
“Since 2014, we embarked on these CBM processes because there was a cry in the grant payment system that grant beneficiaries did not feel comfortable and good and happy,” she says.
Accessing grants
Residents from the greater Athlone and even as far as Delft attended the session to learn more about the findings and also engage on their common concerns around the grant payments.
Melanie Paige, Sassa Athlone manager, says they encourage the reporting of any problems to management and have put in place earlier opening to allow customers the opportunity to enter the building rather than wait outside.
One of the major concerns was the sleeping at the building to access services, arriving at 03:00 and being at risk of illness and robbery.
Paige says often residents give the addresses of friends to access services in Athlone.
She continues that the building can only seat up to 90 clients.
Paige says knowing the correct documentation and information can assist in a smoother process.
In their research, a sample of 21 grant beneficiaries were interviewed.
Most of the beneficiaries accessing grants in the area are over the age of 55, with 25-34 and 35-44 also making up a large percentage of clients.
Customers often wait more than five hours for service and 75% of clients did not use Sassa’s online services, predominantly due to lack of internet access or smart phones.
Room for improvement
Most clients described service as fair or okay, with 25% considering service extremely poor.
When asked where Sassa could improve, the clients said checking of documents in the queue, enquiries dealt with by Sassa staff and not security officers, increasing of staff numbers and improvement of the professionalism and time management of staff.
While private security was visible at some sites monitored, overall feeling of safety when drawing their grants had mixed results.
For 61,54% of grant recipients, they did not make use of the closest paypoints for safety, access to full payments and convenience of close-by centres.
While none of the recipients reported needing to buy items in order to access their grants at certain retail outlets, some of those attending suggest this could be up to R50 at some paypoints.
This was the final CBM for the area.
BlackSash also hosted an unrelated community training on civil rights on Friday 25 October.
