First-year computer science students, Joel Cedras and Veer Gosai, allege that 56 out of 60 students they surveyed on campus had fraudulent Social Relief of Distress grant applications linked to their identity numbers.Fraudsters are believed to have used identity numbers of unsuspecting citizens to claim grants and open bank accounts in their names.
Gosai expressed their concern, saying, “We managed to do a small survey of about 60 people on campus, and we found that 56 people had fraudulent SASSA applications.” He added, “As a matter of fact, a lot of them didn’t know what SASSA is and from that we thought that this is definitely a larger issue. We ended up testing all the possible ID numbers of people born in 2005 February and we found an incredibly high rate of SASSA applications, over 90%.”Executive Manager: Grants Administration at SASSA, Brenton van Vrede, says they are aware of this issue.