Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Friday conducted an oversight inspection at the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) office in Roodepoort, Johannesburg following reports that qualifying social grants applicants were being turned away because Sassa employees refused to do biometric testing.

DA member of Parliament and shadow minister of social development Bridget Masango said: “We spoke to qualifying grants applicants who told us how frustrated they were with the lack of answers from Sassa and the challenges they face because of the problems with the biometric system.”

Several beneficiaries, including an elderly man and woman who qualified for disability grants, said they had been turned away and not received any grants as a result. Although new cards were issued at Roodepoort, some people have reportedly gone for months without having received any money.

According to Masango, there were very long queues at the office, the system to process applications was often offline and there was a lack of doctors to assess beneficiaries.

“It became evident from our discussions with Sassa employees at the office that the agency has not put any contingency plans in place to ensure that biometric testing would be done for new applications. This despite the fact that Sassa had been aware for some time that this function would need to be institutionalised,” she said.