Stellenbosch teenaged students present their findings to Parliament
- The Department of Social Development will investigate fraud allegations in its SRD grant system.
- This comes after two first-year Stellenbosch University students discovered serious flaws in the SRD IT system.
- Minister of Social Development Nokuzola Tolashe said their R266-billion budget for social grants makes them a target for fraud.
- Meanwhile, ActionSA MP Dereleen James said concerns over fraudulent applications had been raised with SASSA last year but remained unresolved.
The Department of Social Development (DSD) says it will investigate allegations of fraud within the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant payment system. They will present their findings in 30 days.
This decision followed a presentation by two first-year Stellenbosch University students, Joel Cedras and Veer Gosai, to the portfolio committee on social development. They highlighted vulnerabilities in SASSA's payment system and potential fraud in SRD applications.
Bridget Masango (DA), chair of the committee, said the briefing was prompted by an article written by Cedras and Gosai on GroundUp last week. Cedras and Gosai first presented their findings on Heart FM.
In her opening remarks, Minister of Social Development Nokuzola Tolashe said the department's budget for social grants of R266-billion benefits 28-million people, of whom eight million are SRD beneficiaries.
She said the department's budget makes it an "attractive target for fraudsters, some of whom have made a career out of trying to steal this money by forming very sophisticated syndicates of cybercriminals to target this large budget".
During their presentation, Cedras and Gosai explained their investigation was motivated by personal experiences and concerns.
Cedras told the committee about his attempts to apply for the SRD grant in February, only to discover that an application was already active under his name. After discussing this with Gosai, they uncovered that an SRD grant application was also active in his name without his knowledge.
They investigated this and found three main issues: a lack of authentication on the SASSA portal; a high number of suspected fraudulent applications; and the ease with which fraudsters could apply for the grant.
They conducted a survey on their campus of 60 people they knew. Fifty-eight of them had active grant applications for the SRD grant on SASSA's system. Fifty-six of them said they had never applied for the grant. This indicates an extremely high rate of fraudulent applications.
They also noted suspiciously high application rates for people born in February 2005.
Gosai explained that they found that 74,931 SRD grant applications were made for people born in February 2005. According to Statistics South Africa (as of 2020) there were 82,097 births in February 2005. This would mean that the application rate is 91%.
"This is highly unlikely when we look at youth unemployment that is around 61%," he said.
Speaking about his personal experience, Cedras said he called SASSA's helpline to raise the issue of his identity number being used to apply for an SRD grant without his knowledge. "I was unable to reach any regional SASSA office. All of their numbers either said it did not exist, or they would answer immediately but there was no response on the other end."
He said he called them again last Thursday to find out if his application had been flagged for fraud. "To this date, my application is still not marked as fraudulent. In this call, I also asked if it was possible to verify myself via the SMS link. The [call agent] told me they don't have systems in place yet," he said.
Gosai said although SASSA urges beneficiaries to contact the hotline for queries, "it is not equipped to deal with this many fraudulent cases. When I called, I was on hold for 30 minutes before the call was dropped," he told the committee.
The pair recommended that SASSA restart its entire SRD grant system. "It seems there are too many applications made without people's knowledge," said Cedras.
He said restarting the system would allow SASSA to reverify all beneficiaries but with a stricter process to combat fraud. Gosai said SASSA needs to implement facial recognition for applicants for all grants. Those without access to a smartphone should be able to complete this process at any local SASSA office.
Not a new issue
Dereleen James (ActionSA) told Parliament that it was not the first time these issues had been raised.
She said in July 2023, Bonnie Songs and Elizabeth Raiters from the #PayTheGrants campaign blew the whistle on the issue.
James read a letter from Raiters: "Last year around March, we started getting queries from beneficiaries who turned 18 in 2005 who tried to apply for the SRD grant. All of them got the message 'grant already active'."
Raiters explained that SASSA was informed about this and the accounts were blocked. The beneficiaries would have to reapply. "Later in the year, we noticed it was not only 18-year-olds, but even beneficiaries who had lost their jobs and tried to apply," the letter said.
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Despite working with SASSA to resolve the issues, Raiters wrote that they still deal with these issues daily.
James also read an email sent by Songs to SASSA on 19 September 2023. In it, she explained that "unauthorised applications for SRD grants" needed to be attended to urgently. Songs said that she reported the issue to SASSA in July 2023 and her son was also a victim of identity theft.
"The painful part is that I reported this matter to SASSA, provided the details of the victims and SASSA hasn't acted to date," Songs wrote.
Both Raiters and Songs raised the issue that it was suspicious that "nearly all people born in 2005 experienced the same predicament".
Tolashe urged the committee to allow sufficient time for a thorough investigation. She reiterated the urgency of the situation, stating, "We can't take forever because as we're sitting here, we don't know how much we are losing through the vulnerability of our systems."
The committee agreed to postpone SASSA's presentation until the investigation is complete.
