(a) 44 142 complaints have been received and 38 357 were since resolved and blocked not to allow any further deductions from recurring. Five
thousand seven hundred and eighty five (5 785) of these cases have been refunded to the beneficiaries.
(b) The nature of the complaints is airtime, electricity and loan deductions.
(c) (i) and (ii) SASSA developed and implemented a Dispute Resolution Mechanism as a recourse system to deal with the rising number of deductions against social grants. The Dispute Resolution Mechanism has a built-in Communication Strategy that focuses on beneficiary education and awareness. In addition to this system, a Ministerial Task Team was established to play a monitoring, oversight and also propose interventions to deal with this challenge. This system has since reflected and improvement in dealing with this.