Tuesday is the last day for social grants beneficiaries to re-register. The South African Security Agency, Sassa, introduced the roll-out of the new bio-metric card system for pay-outs in February last year, which required all beneficiaries to re-register. 

Last month Social Services Minister Bathabile Dlamini said 19 million out of a target of 21 million people have already re-registered. Sassa spokesperson in Mpumalanga, Senzeni Ngubeni says they have re-registered about 95% of the 1. 5 million grant beneficiaries.

Ngubeni says after Tuesday’s closing deadline: “Sassa will be issuing out letters to cancel those who have not come forward.”

“Our suspicions are maybe it will be ghost beneficiaries or for further various reasons which will tell us maybe those grants, even the beneficiaries were not even there, were fraudulent. So Sassa will be closing those that have not come forward to re-register up until this point in time,” says Ngubeni. 

When the system was launched in 2012, Minister Bathabile Dlamini said there are currently over 15 million beneficiaries, ten million of whom are children. Dlamini added that this is part of efforts aimed at eliminating fraud and corruption.

 “With older persons, because they have people who get the grant on their behalf we want to ensure that we go to where they stay so that we register them correctly, take their biometrics,” said Dlamini.

For more http://www.sabc.co.za