No staff will be retrenched when the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) starts operating next year, Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya said on Monday.
“[Under] the Labour Relations Act, all staff in the social security function will be transferred to the agency,” Skweyiya told reporters in Cape Town.
“In terms of the transfer agreement, staff should not be made worse off in terms of their conditions of service and no staff should lose their employment purely as a consequence of their transfer to the agency.”
He said the government moved its task of distributing social grants to the provinces after 1994 to “satisfy the Inkatha Freedom Party and, to some extent, the National Party”.
Now the government is returning this function to the national level after the state lost R1,5-billion a year for the past three years due to fraud and corruption, he said.
“We have decided as a government … that due to the problems that have been faced by government, especially after 1994 in the distribution of pensions, that we should return them back to the national government.
“The distribution of pensions is a national function, but … in agreement mostly to satisfy the IFP, and to some extent, the National Party, in 1995 it was delegated to the provinces,” he said.
The minister said Sassa will be in place as from April 2005.
Department of Social Development spokesperson Kgathi Sathekge said there are about 4Â 000 people who will be transferred to the agency.
Sassa is to take care of about 10-million beneficiaries and manage a budget of about R55-billion. — Sapa
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