Plan to curb grant fraud

GOVERNMENT is to require more than 15 million social grant recipients to re-register for their benefits as part of a drive to eliminate fraud and corruption in the system.

The plan was announced in Parliament yesterday by Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini during a briefing to outline the priorities of the cabinet's social protection and community development cluster.

This follows President Jacob Zuma's state of the nation address last week.

Dlamini said the re-registration process, which is to start in April, was aimed at ensuring that government paid social grants to the "correct recipients" following repeated revelations that there were people who received grants fraudulently.

"We want to ensure that we pay the correct recipients.

"That is why we are going to re-register everyone, even children and older persons. We are going to visit them at their homes.

"We also want to deal with what has been said, that we sometimes pay the wrong people," said Dlamini.

There are currently 15,3-million people on the state's R100-billion social grants system, which includes 10,3-million children who receive support.

There have been allegations that the system was fraught with corruption.

Last year alone the Special Investigating Unit arrested at least 15 employees of the SA Social Security Agency on charges related to social grant fraud and corruption.

Dlamini, however, said while the re-registration process was intended to weed out fraudulent beneficiaries, it would also bring in more beneficiaries into the social welfare system as there were more than two million people who do not access benefits for a variety of reasons.

Speaking at the same briefing Deputy Minister of Human Settlements Zou Kota-Frederiks said the R1billion Mortgage Default Insurance (MDI) announced by Zuma last week, was targeted at civil servants such as police, teachers, nurses and other professionals outside the public service who earned between R3501 and R15000 per month.

The MDI, managed by the National Housing Finance Corporation, is guaranteed to encourage banks and other players in the housing sector to grant mortgage loans to those who might otherwise not qualify for such loans.

It fills the gap between those who qualify for RDP houses but do not earn enough to qualify for a housing loan from a bank, commonly referred to as the "missing middle."

In terms of the MDI, people falling within that income bracket would be eligible to apply for a subsidy of R83000 to help them secure housing bonds of up to R300000 from accredited banks.

"The billion rand won't be enough to do the work that we envisage ... that is why we are saying that housing delivery cannot be the responsibility of government alone," said Kota-Frederiks.

- Sowetan