The looming indemnity deadline for those fraudulently receiving social grants has resulted in a last-minute rush of people queuing to apply, officials said on Thursday.
”There has been an avalanche of people. Limpopo has already reported a long queue, people are in a rush,” said Mbulelo Musi, spokesperson for the Department of Social Development.
Musi said it is difficult to say how many people made their applications on Thursday morning as the various provinces have yet to log the numbers.
Offices will be kept open until 7pm on Thursday night, the cut-off time for all applications.
Almost 6 000 people have applied for indemnity in the various provinces since the indemnity was offered on December 12 last year by Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya to those people who received social grants to which they were not entitled.
Musi said it is difficult to quantify how many people are guilty of fraudulently receiving social grants.
”We have gone public about the fact that we are losing about R1,5-million a year,” Musi said.
The department identified people illegally receiving social grants for the dead and for non-existent children, imagined people with disabilities and invented older persons.
”This state of affairs costs the government huge sums of money, and we are going to make sure this situation is nipped in the bud,” Skweyiya said. ”The days of those receiving grants for ghost beneficiaries are indeed numbered”.
The verification of those entitled to receive grants legally will begin in a ”phased manner” on April 1.
Musi said one of the first phases will be verification through banks, where money is paid into the accounts of beneficiaries who have long died.
Thereafter, the public will be encouraged to verify through their pay points that the grants are theirs by right.
Musi said this will mean ”showing your children at the pay point if you are receiving a grant for them”.
Civil servants involved in defrauding the social grants system are not being considered for the indemnity.
”They are not starving. Why steal money when you have a job? They are stealing from children who have nothing to eat,” said Musi.
The department is working closely with the Scorpions, the special investigations unit, the police and the Department of Justice in investigating cases of fraud and corruption across the country against public servants, syndicates and the public.
Thousands of people attended imbizos (meetings) held in four provinces over the past week, which aimed to inform the public about the indemnity before unleashing ”the wrath of the law”.
The last imbizo before the end of the indemnity period was held in Gauteng on Wednesday. — Sapa