The Special Relief of Distress (SRD) grant is administered under the new Social Assistance Act, which allows individuals with a monthly threshold of R350 and below to receive be grant beneficiaries.
Grants Operations Executive Manager, Brenton Van Vrede said the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) uses a number of systems in order to determine whether an applicant qualifies for the R350 Social Relief of Distress Grant.
Van Vrede further said that out of the 10.9 million applications Sassa had received for the SRD grant, 5 million applications had been approved and approximately 5 million applications declined.
If you are part of the millions of individuals whose applications were rejected, you may exercise your right to appeal the SRD grant application. Recently, a new SRD appeals applications website has been made live.
How To Submit R350 Grant Appeal Under New Rules:
- Visit srd.dsd.gov.za
- Click on the green bar that says 'click here to lodge an appeal or check appeal status'
- Enter your ID number
- Enter your cellphone number
- Click 'send pin' and wait for the SMS which will contain the verification pin
- Enter the pin and click 'submit'
- Select the month you are submitting an appeal for
- Select the drop down arrow and choose the reason for your appeal
- Click 'submit'
According to Sassa, you may apply for the appeal within a period of 30 days but not exceeding 90 days to the Independent Tribunal for Social Assistance Appeals (ITSAA) after receiving the notification that your application has been rejected by Sassa.
It has been reported that this applies to all appeals from April 2022 and onwards. Even if you submitted an appeal using the old SRD website, you must appeal again using the new website.
The ITSAA merged its procedures with Sassa's procedures, which led to a minimal appeals procedure because the ITSAA already had data from Sassa. According to reports, the Tribunal would then investigate what, if anything, Sassa may have missed while assessing your application, and why it was rejected.
As the ITSAA will be handling these appeals, Sassa has confirmed that it will be assessing all the other appeals for months before April 2022, with hopes to finalise all by August 2022.
The Tribunal will inform you of the outcome of your appeal electronically, within a period of 60 - 90 days from the lodging of the appeal.
If you don't get a Sassa grant that you believe you should, you can make a grant appeal to Sassa.
When you want to check your appeal status we are here to help you with a comprehensive guide to the Sassa appeal process.
There is also a video with details on the Sassa appeal process.
You will also like our article When Will I Know If My SRD Grant Was Approved?
Once you have submitted your appeal to Sassa you need to make sure that you check on the status of your appeal.
