The South Africa Social Security Agency (Sassa) has withdrawn its Constitutional Court application asking it to extend a social grants distribution contract it invalidated in 2014.
"The reason at the moment is the fact that there were ... inputs not included," Sassa spokesman Kgomotso Diseko said.
"It's going to be relodged again."
However, Diseko could not say when this would happen.
Sassa had lodged an urgent application on Tuesday asking the court to allow it to enter into another year long contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS).
In its papers, Sassa admitted it did not have the capacity to distribute the social grants and said grant payments would be in jeopardy come April 1 if the court turned down its urgent application. The agency conceded too that its efforts to petition the Treasury for a condonation had fallen flat.
Sassa has also ruled out all other options presented to it as alternatives to distribute the social grants, including roping in the country’s major banks, insisting that only a CPS contract extension would do.
This followed Sassa officials' admission in Parliament that the agency had no plan to distribute more than 17-million social grants to over 11-million beneficiaries other than to extend Net 1 subsidiary CPS’s contract.
A Sassa delegation is due to meet Net 1 CEO Serge Belamant on Wednesday to discuss the terms of a contract extension, while Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini is giving a briefing on the matter on the same day.
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