[ad_1]
Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu says her department intends to recover money from the special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant that some citizens have fraudulently profited from during the shutdown.
This comes after revelations that 1,500 City of Johannesburg (CoJ) employees had fraudulently benefited from the SRD grant and other grants, including social, child, military and retiree grants.
Earlier this week, CoJ Executive Mayor Geoff Makhubo said the city’s Group of Forensic Services and Investigators (GFIS) found that 419 city employees received the R350 relief grant while 1,129 workers illegally received other grants for unemployed people.
Makhubo said the employees would face disciplinary procedures, which had already been initiated.
Talking to The citizen on Thursday, Zulu noted that the R350 grant application system had been exploited by corrupt applicants despite efforts by his department and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) to curb such activities.
“The Covid-19 SRD special grant was intended to help individuals and families facing difficulties during the shutdown, yet some people who had jobs or received other grant money still chose to apply.
“Although the applications were evaluated and verified to see who was eligible for the grant… some must have gone through the system. Note that we had to pay people directly to their banks or through the post office, but if the request was made face to face, all of this could have been avoided, ”he said.
READ MORE: 1500+ CoJ Employees Involved in Covid-19 Grant Fraud
While the district attorney has called for the firing of the CoJ employees and for the executive director of Zulu and Sassa, Busisiwe Memela-Khambula, to render urgent accounts to the parliamentary portfolio committee on the matter, the minister said they will only take measures once the metropolitan municipality has completed its investigation.
“The mayor of Joburg has already assured me that the matter is being taken seriously and once they have finished their investigation, I will be able to present the report to parliament after reviewing it,” he said.
When asked if other municipalities were involved in the grant fraud, the minister further said that her department would only find out once the grant reached its conclusion in January.
“The grant was intended to last a six-month period from May to October 2020, which has now been extended through January.
“So we as a national department can only be sure how much money was stolen and how much should be recovered when we get information from the provincial departments, which will be reviewed by Sassa. Much work remains to be done. Powers would also extend to the Auditor General [Of South Africa] to stop fraud and corruption in such cases, ”he said.
For more news your way, download The Citizen app to ios Y Android.
[ad_2]
