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Social Development Department says the Social Relief Distress grant should be made permanent

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The Social Relieve of Distress (SRD) grant was introduced during the COVID 19 lockdowns to assist people with no source of income. The department’s acting director-general Linton Mchunu says about 31% of the South African population relies on social grants.

The Social Development Department says the expert panel’s report which it has released will soon be taken to Parliament. The report is on the country’s Basic Income Support in which the department says the SRD grant posed little economic and fiscal risk and should be made permanent.

According to the department’s Director General Linton Mchunu, “We are shifting much closer to the realisation of a basic income grant. Before the discussion was should we bring the basic income grant and that’s the first report, the discourse is how best we can and the report launched today looks at the various options available on bringing the grant to fruition. A lot of questions have been asked and this report begins to unearth a number of those.”

Video: Government says it’s making progress in its investigations for a viable grant system

Under-expenditure

Social Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu says there’s been under-expenditure of close to R2 billion on the Social Relief of Distress grant. Zulu says this was caused by the eligibility criteria for confirming bank accounts.

The grant provides monetary assistance to the unemployed who were hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the minister, a huge number of applications were excluded due to the inadequate verification of bank accounts.

Video: Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu on latest developments on the social relief grant

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