Phoenix residents who frequent Phoenix SASSA office have expressed anger over poor social welfare services offered by the agency.
This comes after residents raised concerns about having to stand in winding queues daily, to get basic services. Residents who spoke to the Phoenix Tabloid expressed their frustration and stated that the poor service and extremely long queues at SASSA were becoming more unbearable each day. Speaking to the Phoenix Tabloid, Phoenix pensioner, Gonum Naicker, who arrived at SASSA around 5am and stood in the queue until the offices opened on Friday, 29 October, said: “I’ve been coming to these offices for the past three days with no success of being assisted. Last week, I waited until I was number eight in the queue and they said they will not be seeing to us, we must come the following week as the system was down and they had to close the office for the day.” “I’m a pensioner, I use public transport to get here and I cannot afford to keep coming back to this place. What’s even more frustrating is that the elderly and frail are not being prioritised. In other places, senior citizens are always considered first – here we stand in the hot sun or rain throughout the day until we can’t make it anymore,” said Naicker.
Whetstone resident, Roxanne Maistry, said she had been coming to the SASSA office to apply for a child support grant for almost a month and still hasn’t received any help. “I’m unemployed and have been borrowing money to come to SASSA to apply for child support. I always get here before 9am but never make it inside the office. We are always told that priority is given to the people that have tickets from previous days or weeks. We don’t know what’s the hold-up inside, but we stand outside throughout the day, waiting to get inside, which never happens. I don’t know if the systems are really down as they say or the staff is on a slow-go,” said the 29-year-old mother of one. Another resident, Nolwazi Mkhize from Clayfield, Phoenix, said she had also made several visits to the SASSA office. “There’s always problems here, it’s impossible to get assisted in one day. I’m tired of waiting, that’s all I’ve been doing for the past two weeks. The system is way too slow and the staff are not making things any easier. They are always on their phones, have a bad attitude towards us and are forever dragging their feet, passing time instead of doing what they are getting paid to do,” said Mkhize. “There are people that use their last change for bread and milk to come here every single day as early as 4 or 5am and are still not getting the help they need which is not fair. It’s also not safe for us to come here every day because this place is crowded with hundreds of people waiting in the line.
There’s no social distancing while people wait, and it’s the same thing when you go inside – people are sitting close to each other, some without their masks on. We are still going through a pandemic and the security guards couldn’t care less. They don’t bother with controlling the situation. We come here to get basic services and help but it’s so hard for us to get that at this office,” added Mkhize. Speaking to the Phoenix Tabloid, senior manager for communications at SASSA, Sandy Godlwana, stated: “The biometric system challenges affect not only the Phoenix office but is an occurrence throughout the region which SASSA is attending to. Almost every other day local offices are challenged with the system being offline. Customers are addressed with regards to the down-time. Due to the looting and burning down of the KwaMashu local office, clients from that area also get services at the Phoenix office. The Phoenix office services the entire of Phoenix, Verulam, Tongaat, Cornubia, Amaoti, Bhambayi, Zwelisha amongst other areas. Clients also come through from Inanda and Ntuzuma for SASSA services. This is a huge challenge for the Phoenix team.” “Depending on the availability of SOCPEN (electronic database that details social assistance), we try our level best to finalise most, if not all, cases. However, 90% of the time we are compelled to reschedule clients due to the unusually large number of people that turn up. In the event we reschedule we issue tickets to clients so that we prioritise them the following day.
In the mornings, the queue walker is the early riser who identifies senior citizens, frail, severely physically challenged clients to be put in front of the intake official so that they are fast-tracked. The early riser addresses the outside queues at intervals when system challenges occur. People are encouraged to leave if our waiting area is full to capacity. People have the right to wait until 4pm but are discouraged to do so by the queue walker. During the day, clients presenting with challenges are identified on merit,” said Godlwana. Godlwana added: “Regarding staff attitudes, heads of offices conduct random checks during the day to monitor progress and processes. Any discrepancies identified are dealt with accordingly and addressed. Staff take staggered lunch breaks so that all work stations are manned at all times. If systems are down, staff are encouraged to sit at their desks. Staff may be observed to be using their cellphones during this time which is not abnormal. Staff may also all go on tea or lunch simultaneously when systems are down. This is done with the consent of heads of office, which is not an irregular practice. Clients are addressed when this happens as skeleton staff are at each service point to deal with queries as and when raised by clients.”
