By Lekereni Chinkhota

Salima, October 12, Mana: Salima District Council will soon transition from paying beneficiaries of Social Cash Transfer hard cash to electronic payment as one way of shortening the payment procedures.

Speaking on Friday during the council meeting, Social Welfare Officer responsible for Social Cash Transfer at Salima District Council, Thumbiko Mbale highlighted that the adoption is aimed at easing the mobility of people who travel long distances to access the payments.

“We are migrating from manual payment to e-payment because we believe that this process will help beneficiaries to receive cash in good time. It will also help in efficiency and transparency because it will just be from service providers to the beneficiaries’ accounts," he said.

Mbale said his office has already engaged Telekom Network of Malawi (TNM) as the service provider that will be responsible for the payments through its service TNM Mpamba.

"TNM has already assured us to address network issues that many complain about by mounting transmitters as a way to boost their network in these areas where they have problems accessing their services,” he said.

Expressing her excitement about the initiative, Traditional Authority Maganga said the initiative is welcomed because it will ease the challenges many beneficiaries were facing in accessing the payments.

“We had security reasons after beneficiaries received their payments they were being attacked. The e-payment will also reduce the misuse of money that most people were involved in by buying unnecessary things," she said.

She however expressed disappointment with the use of the Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR) system to identify beneficiaries suggesting that the UBR is outdated and it is not serving the intended purpose other than bringing chaos as people think community leaders have a hand in the selection process.

“The use of the UBR system disappoints us because we see people who have already graduated and are ineligible benefiting from the services. We know the deserving and the ultra-poor, but they are left out because the UBR picks some who already have something to earn a living," she said.

The e-payment will commence in November and is targeted to reach out 11,400 households in the district.

Other districts already using the e-payment include Mangochi, Machinga, Chitipa, Likoma and Mchinji.