A pensioner discovered that he had been defrauded when he used his SASSA card this month.

“Please, let all those getting old-age grants read this, and if they can’t read, let their children read for them. I want to warn them to be very alert," said Mr Joggie Pieterse (74) of Makhado (Louis Trichardt).

Pieterse bought goods to the value of R174.90 at a shop in the Makhado Crossing mall with his SASSA card and asked the cashier to withdraw R300 for him. The cashier completed the transaction. “The cashier then said that a mistake had occurred and it had to be done again, whereafter the cashier did another transaction with my card, asking me for my pin number a second time,” said Pieterse. These transactions took place on New Year’s Day. The amount withdrawn should have been R474.90.

On 5 January, Pieterse went to withdraw money from a bank. “I realized that I was short of R200,” Pieterse said. He tried the ATMs of a couple of banks to get more information, but only Capitec Bank gave some information, which was the balance on the card. Pieterse decided to withdraw another R580 at an ATM before that got lost as well. The next step was to get a statement of the transactions to show that it did not match his till slips.

He called SASSA’s customer care line and held on for more than seven minutes. When he got through, he found that he couldn’t hear what the person was saying, due to unclear speech. Pieterse therefore drove to his son, Francois, who was in Levubu at the time and asked him to phone.

They found that the only way that they could obtain a statement of the transactions on Pieterse’s SASSA card was to give an email address to Grindrod Financial Services. His son supplied an email address and they eventually received a statement, showing that R674.90 had been withdrawn at Pick n Pay instead of R474.90. The R200 was indeed gone.

“I went back to Pick n Pay and the manager was very approachable and accommodating. I was fortunate to receive my R200 back on 8 January, but I was worried that this could happen to many pensioners in different places, without their even realizing it,” Pieterse said.

The manager of the local Pick n Pay, Mr Louis Jordaan, said on 13 January that the problem with Mr Pieterse had been sorted out and they were busy with procedures regarding the cashier involved. “You work with people and anything can happen, but we handle such cases immediately, following our internal procedures,” Jordaan said.

SASSA confirmed on 16 January that a pensioner will not be able to get a statement at a bank. Should the beneficiary of a social grant require a statement, it can be sent via email or fax. Should the beneficiary be unable to receive a statement by any of these ways, he or she can go to the SASSA office and ask them to get a printed statement .

“In future I think I shall withdraw the whole grant amount at once,” said Pieterse. That still might not be the solution, since carrying a lot of cash poses its own risks.