The number of beneficiaries of the social relief of distress grant has dropped. Nearly 7.5 million people are now receiving the grant which was introduced during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Social Development Minister and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) updated the media on the relief and top-up grants for orphans.
About 10 million unemployed South Africans benefited from the R350 COVID-19 grant. Following the lifting of the National State of Disaster in March, the government had to introduce new regulations.
Sassa CEO, Totsie Memela- Khambula, says this included among others refining all accounts to ensure the right people are paid.
“Now that we are looking all accounts to ensure that we refine, that we don’t give access to other people who have funding, we don’t give them the grant. In the first iteration, it was 15 million people who applied and we were paying about over 10 million people and in this iteration, we have the number of people that have applied is currently sitting at 12 million and we’re paying about 7,5 million people.”
The increased income threshold to qualify from R350 up to R624 which is in line with the estimated food poverty line, has however resulted in fewer people qualifying for the grant.
There have been proposals that the bank verification process which determines eligibility, be scrapped. Memela-Khambula however says the lower numbers are due to people going back to work.
“With the refinement we found that we are giving in this particular iteration much fewer people than people that were accessing the grant previously. But this has to do with the fact that people have gone back to work so there are more people that in the past had to stay at home and could not access their jobs or the hustling that some of the people do.”
Meanwhile, Social Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu, has again appealed to relatives caring for orphans to apply for the child support grant top-up. The government has increased the grant which benefits about 16-thousand children, from R480 to R720.
“A 2016 cabinet-approved policy enables the additional R240 to the standard R480. The provision of this policy enables me as the Minister of social development to introduce the higher value child support top-up for orphans and as a result, on June 1st 22, and with the concurrence of the finance minister I introduced the child support grant top-up.”
Zulu says they’ve been canvassing for the R350 grant to be made permanent. Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana, is expected to give an update on the matter when he delivers his mid-term budget speech later this month.
