‘Give me a cut and I will give you a fake disability grant’ — welcome to prison

Two Tzaneen government workers who concocted a scheme to siphon “a cut” of disability grants have been jailed.

Solani Agnes Baloyi, 56,and Jacob Manamela, 64, who worked at the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), were each sentenced to an effective five years' imprisonment by the Giyani Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on Tuesday.

Police spokesperson Capt Matimba Maluleke said the two recruited unemployed people from the area to apply for disability grants though they were not disabled.

They processed the applications and the payments were made to unfit beneficiaries, he said.

“The first payments would be shared with the officials while the other payments would be for the beneficiaries.”

Sassa authorities received a tip off about the fraud in January 2015, and reported it to the Hawks' Serious Commercial Crime Investigation offices.

The department suffered a loss of R600,000 from the fraud.

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