The incident happened on Tuesday afternoon at the Athlone Civic Centre where the Cape Argus was reporting on a SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) pay point system failure. When reporters and photographers tried to enter the centre, which houses one of these pay points, they were stopped and turned away by security guards. Staff photographer David Ritchie was taking photographs of members of the public leaving the premises, when a security guard walked towards him, lifted his firearm and took aim.
“If members of the media have the proper identification, and follow the proper channels, Sassa would never deny them access to a pay point,” Shivani Wahab, spokeswoman for Sassa in the Western Cape, said.
Fidelity is subcontracted by Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), which delivers grant payments on behalf of Sassa, to provide security at pay points. “We think that the conduct of the security guard in question was unacceptable and unjustified. Sassa’s Western Cape office will commit to taking the matter further with CPS.”
Meanwhile, the chaos at the province’s Sassa pay points entered a second day on Tuesday, as pensioners who were not attended to on Monday queued again for hours. Wahab said the technical glitch in CPS’s online system, which caused the delays, had not been sorted out. “But improvements had been reported at some pay points,” she said.
On Tuesday afternoon Albert Fritz, MEC for Social Development, visited a pay point at Elsies River and said he was “shocked at the chaotic state of service delivery”.
Keri Davids, spokeswoman for Emergency Medical Services, confirmed that paramedics had treated four people on Monday. “Today (Tuesday) we treated eight elderly patients on site for exhaustion and dehydration. We had an ambulance on standby, but luckily nobody needed hospitalisation.”
Source: IoL
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