Security guard strike hits Western Cape SASSA offices
Several offices closed on Tuesday
The Athlone SASSA office was open on Wednesday but the queue was long. People at the front of the queue said they had been there since 5am. Photo: Marecia Damons
Several South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) offices in the Western Cape were closed on Tuesday as a result of a strike by security guards.
SASSA promised to put a contingency plan in place, and when GroundUp checked on Wednesday, the Cape Town office and the Athlone offices were open again. Calls to other offices in the city to find out if they were open went unanswered.
Annelize Bester, acting regional executive manager for SASSA in the Western Cape, said SASSA had closed some offices on Tuesday “as we do not have enough security officials on duty to cover all the service points”.
She said that SASSA offices in Athlone, Vredenburg, Khayelitsha, Cape Town, Eerste River, Mitchells Plain, Robertson, and Beaufort West were unable to service clients. Offices in Gugulethu, Oudtshoorn, George, Worcester, Witzenberg, Vredendal, Wynberg, Paarl, Bellville, and Grabouw continued to provide either full or reduced services.
For clients affected by the closures, alternative appointment dates were being arranged where possible, said Bester. She said people wanting to apply for grants could also use the SASSA website’s online platform.
Bester said the strike was the result of a dispute between the security company appointed by SASSA and employees. SASSA had been notified about the strike late on Monday. She said SASSA was in discussions with the security company.
“We profusely apologise to clients for the inconvenience caused today and assure them that we will try our utmost best to ensure that services are rendered in a safe and secure environment.”
On Wednesday SASSA told GroundUp that the security service provider has implemented the contingency plan and all SASSA offices should be operational today.
Next: In sickness and in health: What can workers expect from their employer if they are too sick to work?
Previous: Cost of taxi rank balloons from R5.8-million to more than R20-million
Letters
Dear Editor
I was amongst the people who actually had an appointment for the 13th to submit my documents after seeing the SASSA doctor on the 5th August. I was in the queue with an individual who suffers from neuropathy in his legs and, on crutches, stood there with me from 5am to 9am. I have fibromyalgia and carpel tunnel in both my hands.
How will applicants get a new appointment date as nothing besides the strike and it's impact on SASSA being forced to keep its doors shut was communicated by the official there.
Will SASSA be operational this coming Tuesday? Disability grants are only processed on Tuesdays and most of us struggle and have to arrange transport to the office in Athlone that early. How will we be assisted as we now lost/forfeited our appointment date due to this strike?
© 2024 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.