Dear Mr Hendricks

I am sure that you are well aware of the debacle surrounding the suspension of the SASSA grant that is affecting thousands of recipients. I am one of these. There is is no justification for suspension in my case. My income has barely increased, and I still meet the regulatory requirements.

What disturbs me is the way this situation has been handled. No notification was issued by SASSA. No information was sent as to what documents need to be re-submitted. The SASSA telephone lines go unanswered. There is no response to emails. It is impossible to get into the Wynberg SASSA building as there are long, long queues that stretch onto the pavement outside this building. More disturbing is the hard fact: there is a total lack of a system to deal with this problem. In short, it is a mess. At a certain time, after many hours of being in a queue in the cold and rain, scores of people are bluntly dismissed and told to return the following week. The security staff are dismissive and rude. And there appears to be no supervisor or manager available to explain anything.
An aged person cannot be expected to return week after week to the SASSA office, only to be dismissed each time. Is this the democracy we fought so long and hard for?

I. like thousands of South Africans, am mindful of the SASSA criminal syndicate that had been (are) syphoning millions of Rands of our money. Are we, the needy pensioners, been made the scapegoats?

Please, in your capacity as Deputy Minister of Social Development, expedite a solution.

Thank you

Yours sincerely