BUSINESS NEWS - Most days snaking queues form outside the Net1 Financial Services office in Soshanguve Plaza, Pretoria.
People draw their social grants here but many also come to borrow money on their EasyPay Everywhere green cards because they can’t make ends meet with their meagre grant money.
On the first Friday of June, there was a queue of about 250 people to draw old-age and disability grants, and another queue of about 100 people who wanted to take out loans against their social grants, a controversial but thriving business.
There are queues most days for loans and they start forming hours before the office opens at 08:00.
People sometimes have to return the following day as the office cannot process everyone waiting in line by 16:00.
Annah Zondo, 68, who lives in a shack in Soutpan, Tswaing, says her family cut meals down to two a day and she still has had to resort to taking out a loan.
By grant payout day there was nothing to eat at home for her family of seven. An old-age grant is R1,980. She said that after deductions, she received about R1,500 in June.
“I received my money yesterday but it’s already finished,” said Zondo.
She spent it mostly on groceries, then bought paraffin and paid her dues for a burial society.
“I’m here to borrow money again because I finished paying my loan which I took out in December,” she said. She had borrowed R1,800 from Net1 and paid back over six months.
“I know that even the loan they give me [now] won’t last. I will suffer before the month ends,” said Zondo. “I’m busy crushing tins that I collected so that I can make extra money.”
