Staff Writer
The Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare has completed the verification of the beneficiaries of its social welfare programmes.
Through this verification process the ministry has removed 18 503 beneficiaries from its register, saving the government five million dollars. This figure included 4156 deceased beneficiaries and 249 expired Disability Grants.
“The deletion of the 4156 deceased beneficiaries has already realised a saving of N$ 5 million. The reason for the disparity is that some of the data transferred from SAS to ISAS, could not be positively verified against the NPRS as an authentic record of the particulars of a given beneficiary. This was due to a variety of factors; including invalid ID numbers, misspelled names and surnames, incorrect dates of birth. Possible fraudulent IDs and Identity theft, to name a few, “ said Doreen Sioka in a ministerial statement in the National Assembly today.
Furthermore, she added that the disparities had an impact on some beneficiaries’ June payouts.
“As a result, we urge all members of the public, who may have not received their grants in July or had enrolled/applied for their different grants with a reference number or changed their names on national documents after application to visit the nearest office as soon as possible for verification.
“Those that visit the office from now until 15th July 2022, will be paid in August 2022 and those that only manage to visit the office for the envisaged change after the 15th July 2022, will only be paid in September 2022,” she added.
According to the ministry the new system, has advantages and features that, the old one did not have such as a web application and allow regional and district offices to capture advices directly on the system and can be linked to the payment agents. This allows the system to provide near live payment history and reconciliation of payments via cash paymasters and it will soon be linked with other organizations, ministries and agencies especially the Social Security Commission, which according to the ministry will allow the system to test grants that have conditions on employment and income levels.
