Chaos reigned at the Athlone Post Office this week as scores of expiring Sassa cards urgently need to be renewed. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks/GroundUp)
By Liezl Human, GroundUp
Chaos reigned outside the post office in Athlone, Cape Town, this week as the branch appeared to be reeling under pressure to renew scores of gold social grant cards due to expire over the next few months.
However, the organization Black Sash is concerned that the problem is much more widespread.
Posbank loads beneficiaries’ social allowance onto these gold cards.
The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has advised beneficiaries whose cards have already expired to visit their nearest post office to receive a new card. However, not all post offices can provide this service.
According to Bongani Diako, spokesperson for Posbank, around 175,000 cards expired at the end of March. He says the post office has started a gradual process to issue the new cards and that almost all beneficiaries whose cards expired last month have already received new cards.
However, the amount of people who still need to get new cards is growing significantly. In April, around 860,000 cards will expire, almost 2.8 million will expire next month and another 1.8 million in June, says Posbank.
There have been long queues of people outside the post office in Athlone for the past week.
Thandi Henkeman, the Western Cape regional manager of Black Sash, says the situation is continuously worsening and the help of the police had to be called in to help with crowd control.
Henkeman says they are concerned about several issues, including the beneficiaries’ right to dignity. Many pensioners queue for hours, without any chairs or protection from the elements.
The post office in Athlone also has limited capacity to help anyone who needs new gold cards. This is in addition to the beneficiaries who use the post office to receive their allowance or those who need help with payment problems, says Henkeman.
Pensioner Cecilia Daniels had already fallen in line at 05:30 in the hope that she would be helped. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks/GroundUp)
“The post office is succumbing to the pressure and is ill-equipped to help everyone who needs help immediately.
“The rights are supposed to be available to all South Africans, with the only condition attached to it being that you show up. It is not a privilege.”
Henkeman also says that the situation in Athlone is an indication of events at post offices elsewhere in the country.
There are also concerns about the safety of post office workers and beneficiaries following reports of robberies at several post offices.
Another problem is the non-payment of approved allowance with people being sent from port to starboard to try to establish why their allowance has not been paid.
However, Diako says it is not unusual to see queues during peak periods of economic activity at shops, ATMs and shopping centres, especially during Sassa payment dates.
Sassa did not respond to inquiries.
