Postbank reassures social grant beneficiaries amid card transition woes

State-owned bank Postbank reiterated on Tuesday that those who have not swapped their South African Social Security Agency gold cards for the bank’s black cards will receive their grants after the March 20 deadline.

The bank said contingency measures put in place to ensure continued payment of the grants to the beneficiaries following concerns by beneficiaries fearing the looming deadline will result in the loss of income.

“Our contingency is to allow beneficiaries who have not swapped by 20 March to go to any South African Post Office or withdraw through the cardless process,” chief operating officer Eurekha Singh said.

She was briefing the social development portfolio committee in the Western Cape provincial legislature.

The card replacement process has seen long queues at retail shops as beneficiaries wait amid glitches in the network system of the Home Affairs Department.

Addressing the portfolio committee, Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Mondli Gungubele said the Sassa gold card was declared defective for the payment system by the South African Reserve Bank, which provided Postbank with limited banking services pending.

“For Postbank to be recognized by SARB as a fully fledged bank, the only outstanding issue is the black card which can be used anywhere,” Gungubele said.

He stated that the Sassa gold card have to be removed from the banking payment system by the end of the month.

“We are trying to move at a pace all beneficiaries get the black card by the end of March, which has clearly been impossible.”

Gungubele said they were doing their best to ensure most of the social grants were moved o the Postbank’s black card.

“It is clear that process is going to go beyond end of March.”

He told the law-makers that they were aiming to swap all the gold for black cards between March and June.

“Those who have not received black cards will have gold cards that are not working after March. An alternative is that between March and June people will still access the institution to get their money using the cardless system,” Gungubele said.

He accepted that the card replacement project could have been done better.

Singh said they had initially planned to have 236 distribution points nationally and 27 in the Western Cape, but there were only 20 distribution points in the province and two roving teams.

The sites will be increased to over 40 soon.

On the problems encountered, she said they received far lower number of applications when they recruited staff for the sites.

There are network problems with the Home Affairs system to verify the beneficiaries.

As at 28 February out of the 3 million cards, 31% had been issued nationally and 24%  -77 932 cards issued out of 322 919 beneficiaries in the Western Cape

However, tellers have been increased at the card replacement sites from two to four and the Spar group has signed up and roving teams also increased to get to the outlying areas.

Portfolio committee chairperson and DA spokesperson on social development Wendy Kaizer-Philander said they appreciated Postbank’s openness to engage on the matter.

“It is clear that one of the main challenges they face is resourcing, particularly in retaining staff to work at the service points. The situation has been exacerbated by incidents of staff being threatened or robbed in certain areas, which has led to resignations and the closure of some sites,” Kaizer-Philander said.

Social Development Minister Jaco Londt, who met Postbank management on Monday, said while they were encouraged by Postbank’s plan to incrementally increase sites across the province, they were concerned at the pace at which it is doing this.

“We have asked that Postbank keeps us informed of the active sites and the schedule of its roving teams that will be going to areas where there are no fixed service points,” Londt said.

mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za