The South African Social Security Agency has strengthened the capacity of their risk and compliance unit as part of their anti-fraud management strategy that has been introduced to curb fraudulent activity committed by its workers.

That’s according to SASSA’s acting CEO Themba Matlou, who during last night’s engagement with the media in Polokwane revealed that they have declared fraud investigation as a flagship project at SASSA, together with law enforcement.

Matlou says members of the public are also defrauding SASSA and their everyday cases include identity theft where people use a SASSA recipient’s ID number to apply for a grant and claim the money without the person’s knowledge.

He says this identity theft is prevalent with the Social Relief of Distress Grant , to a point where they’ve received 1537 cases from the National Anti-Corruption Hotline and in Limpopo they’ve recently witnessed 2 suspects arrested in Lulekani and Malamulele.

Matlou says in the financial year starting this month, they are going to implement a total rollout of their biometric identity verification system to help curb fraud and identity theft.