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Lakela Kaunda

SINCE late in March this year, City Press has focused with great zeal on administrative processes within the ministry of social development relating to the SA Social Security Agency’s (Sassa’s) tenders for the payment of social grants as well as the replacement of IT systems.

In these reports the minister of social development, Dr Zola Skweyiya, has been accused of improper conduct – ranging from an alleged intention to award the social grants payment tender to business entities linked to his spouse, to so-called dithering with regard to replacing a dated social pensions IT system.

Doubt has also been cast on the credibility of Sassa’s procurement processes.

In terms of the Public Finance Management Act, no minister is involved in the drawing up of specifications, evaluation, adjudication and awarding of tenders. All of these administrative processes are handled by committees appointed by the accounting officers. Ministers only make policy decisions.

The social grants tender is being processed nationally for the first time because until 2005 the provinces were responsible for social assistance. They then concluded all payment contracts.

From April 2006 Sassa became responsible for the management and administration of social grants. Since the shift of functions to the national sphere no new contracts have been entered into.

The current distributors of social grants, appointed by the provinces, are Allpay, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), Empilweni, the SA Post Office and the four major banks.

At a policy level the minister noticed discrepancies in the transactions per province. He has on a few occasions expressed his preference for the Post Office as government’s service provider of choice.

In pursuance of that objective, Sassa, the department of social development and the Post Office entered into a memorandum of understanding in terms of which the Post Office is building capacity for it to fulfil the role in future. In the meantime, Sassa is using the existing service providers.

It is a matter of concern that certain service providers have dominated this market since the service was opened up. In the current bid process, instead of looking for one service provider to ensure uniformity of services nationwide, we decided to subdivide the bid into nine provincial tenders. This will prevent the development of a monopoly and allow opportunities for new entrants into the market.

The tender is valued at approximately R3 billion a year over a period of three years and not R70 billion as claimed by City Press.

We have observed interesting twists in City Press in the angles of recent stories. For example the March 23 edition suggested that the minister was compromised in the tender process in favour of CPS due to alleged business links between his spouse and one of the business partners. On that basis he was accused of a conflict of interest.

The lead story in the edition of April 26 intimated that the minister was now compromised in favour of Allpay due to shares allocated to his spouse. This suggests that the minister is now torn between two of the main current service providers. This is absolutely ludicrous.

It is interesting that instead of calling for fairness in the process there has been a concerted campaign to attack the minister’s integrity, accompanied by calls for the disqualification of certain bidders.

Our tender process is on track and will proceed according to plan. The entire process is being audited by the office of the auditor-general for compliance with procurement prescripts. Due to the magnitude of the tender it has been necessary to ensure a high level of integrity and due diligence.

The matter relating to the replacement of the social pensions IT system (City Press March 29) is sub judice.