Pensioners battle Sassa’s broken system

‘TREATED LIKE ANIMALS’

- MONISHKA GOVENDER

VULNERABLE pensioners share harrowing experiences of spending hours in queues, facing staff indifference, and navigating broken systems at Sassa offices across the country.

With multiple visits required for basic services, the elderly said they were left feeling humiliated while spending scarce resources on transport for repeated trips.

Frustrated pensioners and their caregivers said they felt their dignity had been stripped as they begged for assistance from a system which was meant to support them.

One woman shared the painful ordeal of taking her frail, 82-year-old mother to the Chesterville Sassa office in Durban.

Her goal was to apply for a grant-in-aid of just R500 more a month to help pay for her mother’s caregiver.

But it took three visits over two weeks to achieve what should have been a straightforward application.

“Taking my mother, who is mostly dependent on a cane or a wheelchair, to a township-based Sassa office was not easy. On the first visit, my mother and two others, one of whom was also in a wheelchair, were deemed as ‘emergency’ cases.

“But they waited from 7am to around 3pm before they were attended to. The plan for the second visit was to arrive after lunchtime to avoid the crowd. But this was met with disapproval. ‘You should have been here in the morning’, was the response from staff.

“This made no sense. A woman who arrived at 9am was still waiting to be attended to when we arrived at 2.15pm, and our turn was directly after hers. One elderly woman, who carried an oxygen tank, arrived late to meet with the district surgeon. To get a followup date, she waited five hours.”

Despite visibly struggling, staff offered no help. A misunderstanding by a staff member even led to her being turned away, mistaking her breathing difficulty as a reason to postpone.