{"id":234220,"date":"2022-08-16T11:16:33","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T09:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/closure-of-sassa-office-in-khayelitsha-caused-chaos-and-confusion\/"},"modified":"2022-08-16T11:16:33","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T09:16:33","slug":"disorganised-sassa-leaves-disabled-grant-recipients-standing-in-the-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/disorganised-sassa-leaves-disabled-grant-recipients-standing-in-the-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Disorganised SASSA leaves disabled grant recipients standing in the rain"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Liezl%20Human\/temporary_site_in_khayelitsha.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/disorganised-sassa-leaves-disabled-grant-recipients-standing-in-the-rain.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">About 100 people queue in the rain and cold weather outside SASSA\u2019s temporary office at the Khulani Resource Centre opposite the Lingelethu West SAPS station in Khayelitsha. This follows the sudden closure of its office which caused chaos and confusion for beneficiaries last month. Photo: Liezl Human<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The closure of the main social grants office in Khayelitsha has caused chaos and confusion for beneficiaries. Following public outcry, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) announced that it would open temporary sites across the community where services are to continue.<\/li>\n<li>We visited one of the temporary sites on Friday and found about 100 people queue in the rain and cold weather outside. Many of them had travelled there when they were not helped at the surrounding offices.<\/li>\n<li>The Khayelitsha office was closed for maintenance in July without notifying hundreds of SASSA recipients and is only expected to be ready in 2023.<\/li>\n<li>From 1 September SASSA services will also be offered on two floors of the City of Cape Town\u2019s Kuyasa sub-council office.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The closure of the main social grants office in Khayelitsha has caused chaos and confusion for beneficiaries being sent back and forth between offices.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/disorganised-sassa-leaves-disabled-grant-recipients-standing-in-the-rain.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The office was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/sassa-in-khayelitsha-closed-until-further-notice-says-agency\/\">closed for maintenance in July<\/a> with little to no notice given to hundreds of grant recipients. The building, which also housed the provincial Department of Social Development, is undergoing maintenance and is expected to reopen next year.<\/p>\n<p>The closure caused beneficiaries from Khayelitsha to flock to surrounding SASSA offices such as Mitchells Plain. People told us they were not helped at the Mitchells Plain or Eerste Rivier offices despite being given dates and told by officials to be there.<\/p>\n<p>Following public outcry, SASSA announced that it would be continuing its services at the Khulani Resource Centre opposite the Lingelethu West SAPS.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStaff from the Khayelitsha Office were redeployed to other sites in the metro. A priority queue specifically for all clients from Khayelitsha was also established at these sites,\u201d SASSA said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>When we visited the new temporary site, there were about 100 people queued in the rain and cold weather outside. Many of them had travelled to the new office after they were not helped at the surrounding offices.<\/p>\n<p>We spoke to beneficiaries who asked that we withhold their names because they are scared it will affect the outcome of their grant applications.<\/p>\n<p>A disability grant recipient told GroundUp that it was her third visit to a SASSA office that week without being assisted. She said she was worried that she may only be given new appointment dates instead of being assisted. \u201cWe\u2019re waking up every morning just to get a date [from SASSA],\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Another beneficiary said she went to the Eerste Rivier office when the Khayelitsha one closed. \u201cI was sent back here. We\u2019re not working. It cost money to go there.\u201d This was her second day standing in line for help at the temporary Khayelitsha office.<\/p>\n<p>She said some people sleep outside on the pavement while others come as early as 2am to be among the first in line. \u201cWhat about their health? It\u2019s cold outside. It\u2019s raining.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last week, GroundUp also visited SASSA\u2019s Mitchells Plain office. People we spoke to had to travel long distances at an additional travel cost to get to the office. One round trip from Khayelitsha by taxi to the Mitchells Plain office cost up to R50.<\/p>\n<p>Thandi Henkeman, Western Cape Regional Officer at the Black Sash, said the organisation has been monitoring the situation in Khayelitsha and has raised several concerns.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSASSA agreed for Black Sash to have a direct line to SASSA to report any challenges,\u201d said Henkeman.<\/p>\n<p>She said that it was unacceptable that beneficiaries had to sleep outside in order to ensure they are helped. \u201cBeneficiaries are desperate and pressured due to the uncertainty of services and the lack of communication. They feel forced to take the risk of sleeping outside to secure a place [in line],\u201d said Henkeman.<\/p>\n<p>She also noted that the Khayelitsha office\u2019s queue management has been an ongoing issue. She said this was partly due to beneficiaries having to constantly return to the office to \u201cresolve issues or even restart processes due to misplaced data\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>On 15 August, the City of Cape Town announced that it has signed a three-year lease with the welfare agency for two floors in its Kuyasa sub-council office starting on 1 September. Under the lease agreement, a refurbishment of the space is planned.<\/p>\n<p>SASSA Western Cape did not respond to the questions we sent last week.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 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<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/disorganised-sassa-leaves-disabled-grant-recipients-standing-in-the-rain.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 100 people queue in the rain and cold weather outside SASSA\u2019s temporary office at the Khulani Resource Centre opposite the Lingelethu West SAPS station in Khayelitsha. This follows the sudden closure of its office which caused chaos and confusion for beneficiaries last month. Photo: Liezl Human The closure of the main social grants office [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":234221,"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-234220","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\/2022\/08\/disorganised-sassa-leaves-disabled-grant-recipients-standing-in-the-rain.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234220","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=234220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}