{"id":168832,"date":"2020-10-15T05:40:42","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T03:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/water-outage-stops-sassa-office-processing-grants\/"},"modified":"2020-10-15T05:40:42","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T03:40:42","slug":"water-outage-stops-sassa-office-processing-grants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/water-outage-stops-sassa-office-processing-grants\/","title":{"rendered":"Water outage stops SASSA office processing grants"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Mkhuseli%20Sizani\/sassa_zwide-ms-20201013.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Photo of a queue\" data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"4119370744\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/water-outage-stops-sassa-office-processing-grants.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Social grant beneficiaries were turned away at SASSA\u2019s Zwide office in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday, because the office had no water. The office opened to long queues on Wednesday. Photo: Mkhuseli Sizani<\/p>\n<p>About 100 SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) beneficiaries and applicants were furious when officials at the Zwide offices in Koyana Street, Port Elizabeth, turned them away on Tuesday morning because the building had no water.<\/p>\n<p>Many people in the queue were elderly and some had started to queue as early as 5am, waiting for the office to open at 8am. Some accused the officials of looking for excuses to get out of work.<\/p>\n<p>Residents said a pipe had burst on Monday night in Koyana Street, cutting supply to the area.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWater and toilets have nothing to do with processing of our applications. SASSA should have installed Jojo tanks and used them as a back-up in situations like these,\u201d said Thobeka Muvambo, from Govan Mbeki.<\/p>\n<p>She said, \u201cOn Monday I was here but after 11am we were turned away by these officials. They said it was too late to serve us \u2026 Today [Tuesday], I arrived at about 6:20am, but the officials used the burst water pipe as an excuse not to help us. Not a single person was served. I spent R30 for taxi fare to come here. The officials said even if we come tomorrow there is no guarantee that we would be served, because Wednesdays are for processing children\u2019s grants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luzuko Qina, Provincial SASSA spokesperson, said, \u201cStaff and clients were advised to come Wednesday. The burst pipe is being fixed.\u201d Qina did not respond to other questions.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday morning, there were long queues outside the gates and queues inside as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2020 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/water-outage-stops-sassa-office-processing-grants.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Social grant beneficiaries were turned away at SASSA\u2019s Zwide office in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday, because the office had no water. The office opened to long queues on Wednesday. Photo: Mkhuseli Sizani About 100 SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) beneficiaries and applicants were furious when officials at the Zwide offices in Koyana Street, Port Elizabeth, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":168833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-168832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/water-outage-stops-sassa-office-processing-grants.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}