SASSA has attributed the chaos at its Cape Town offices to the closure of municipality-owned buildings due to Covid-19.
CEO Busisiwe Memela-Khambula, who visited the Gugulethu office on Thursday, 14 January, said they have been speaking to the city to open satellite offices again.
“This office is congested because the other offices have been closed because they belong to the city. Those facilities are closer to where communities are and in the past, they did not have to come here.”
She said they have been engaging the city on venues since June, but with no success.
Community safety and health MMC Zahid Badroodien said the city was being blamed for Sassa’s failure to plan.
“Engagement with Sassa took place in June through an official request that community halls be opened to accommodate grant payments. Sassa was informed of certain community halls not being available due to the city’s coronavirus response.”
Badroodien said the city’s recreation and parks department identified facilities for other departments for various uses.
“Unfortunately, the facilities identified were rejected by Sassa as they insisted the city install technical infrastructure that would alter the multifunctional nature of these facilities. More importantly, these spaces, although closed, still belong to our communities and their multi-functional purpose must be retained,” he said.
EFF councillor Banzi Dambuza said: “The city can never claim they are a city that cares and yet our people are in this situation. They can’t care enough to open up their halls.
“We call on the City of Cape Town to act as a city that cares.”
Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu said she was briefed that the closure of satellite offices was one of the major problems causing the congestion.
