If the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) were to follow the recommendation of the Public Service Commission (PSC) to up their service delivery standards, this would improve the lives of pensioners and orphans they have to serve.

The PSC conducted a study to assess the management of service termination and pension payouts in the public service in 2015/2016 following Sowetan's four-year exposé of the GEPF's appalling service delivery.

In 2014, Consumer Line recovered over R50-million on behalf of readers, and most millions were paid by GEPF after our intervention.

Consumers who approached Sowetan for help had either waited for years or had lost their properties due to the delayed payouts.

The overall objective of the study was to establish the challenges that are leading to delays in processing payouts.

The study, which was released last month, revealed, among other things, that customary and civil marriage disputes were a big challenge because in some cases, some male employees have customary marriages in the villages they come from and also have civil marriages where they work and live.

Take the case of Sibonisiwe Mashego, 59, of Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, who was unduly made to wait for five years for her pension payout. Finally, she and her two children were recently paid what was due to them after Consumer Line stepped in.

The Mashegos were paid about R900000, but the GEPF withheld a large portion of the payout pending paternity tests over a second marriage as another woman claimed she had two children fathered by the late Isaiah Mashego, Sibonisiwe said.

Sibonisiwe accused the GEPF of entertaining the other woman's claim that she had been in a polygamous marriage with her husband, despite the woman not producing any proof of marriage.

The woman neither co-operated nor subjected her children to a paternity test despited numerous requests to do so.

The delay came after the SA Police Service insisted that the "second wife" should bring a letter of lobolo to prove her claim even though the marriage in question was not "legal" as Sibonisiwe and her late husband had entered into a civil marriage.

The late Mashego was married in terms of the Marriages Act of 1961 and was still married to Sibonisiwe when he died in 2011 after working as a police officer for 30 years.

Sibonisiwe's problem started when a woman approached her husband's employers, claiming she had been married to him and tried to claim a share of his pension fund.

Sibonisiwe had argued that any type of marriage Mashego would have entered into would have been illegal since their type of marriage prevented him from entering into a customary or polygamous marriage.

The longest delay was that of the four Nongwane orphans, whose father died in 2005.

Andiswa Nongwane, 27, of Nywara village in Eastern Cape, approached Consumer Line for help in April last year after battling on her own to claim their inheritance from GEPF.

She was 16 years when her father died in 2005 after a long illness, she said.

On claiming their father's pension fund, they were told their father did not contribute on the year in which he died, she said.

Instead of paying them what their father had contributed over 16 years, GEPF decided to keep their money for 10 years, Andiswa said.

GEPF paid them in dribs and drabs after Consumer Line took up their matter.

The four of them were paid approximately R300000 altogether. Two of them received the money between November and December last year, while the remaining two were finally paid last month.

Mack Lewele, communications head at the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA), said they have noted the PSC study and are in consultation with them.

"At this stage, we are unable to indicate if and when we will implement the recommendations until our consultation process is completed."

Some causes of Late payments

The findings that create or contribute to delays in pension payouts, thus resulting in a negative effect on the welfare of retirees, their dependants and beneficiaries of deceased employees are, among others:

- Service termination policies and procedures are not in place in most departments.

- Inadequate capacity in some departments due to lack of structured training for HR practitioners dealing with service termination.

- Inadequate record management within departments.

- Centralisation of HR functions in big national departments with provincial and regional offices;

- Employees do not update their pension beneficiary information with the employer.

- Incompatible IT systems in departments with GPAA's e-Channel.

- Inadequate capacity of some GPAA client liaison officers.

- Inadequate support and communication of feedback by departments and GPAA to retirees or beneficiaries of deceased employees.

The recommendations

The study recommended that the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA), in collaboration with relevant departments, should create a database of unclaimed pension benefits and employ a tracing agent to find the dependants or beneficiaries and process their claims.

 - The GPAA should capacitate all client liaison officers.

- Departments should submit details of pension fund members or beneficiaries who have not claimed their pensions to GPAA.

- The departments, in collaboration with GPAA and SARS, should implement awareness campaigns continuously for the benefit of newly appointed employees and long-term serving employees to ensure a thorough understanding of the processes, income tax issues and legislative changes; and where possible, invite dependants and/or beneficiaries to the information sessions with the consent of pension members.

- National departments that have provincial and regional offices across the country should decentralise some HR functions, especially processes related to service termination and pension payouts.

- The departments should also upgrade IT systems to enable them to be compatible with the GPAA e-Channel system.