The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) revealed that more than 13.5 million people applied for the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant. The number of people approved to receive the critical relief measure is considerably less.
During a parliamentary briefing, the Department of Social Development (DSD) revealed that between 7,4 million and 7,6 million people are approved for SRD grant payments monthly. For January 2023, 84% of the individuals approved for SRD grant payments have been paid.
The percentage of people who have been paid the SRD grant has been on a downward trend since April 2022 with the exception of January 2023.
Percentage Of Approved Grant Beneficiaries Who Received SRD Grant Payments Monthly
- April 2022 - 95.38% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- May 2022 - 94.91% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- June 2022 - 94.44% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- July 2022 - 92.51% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- August 2022 - 89.08% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- September 2022 - 88.37% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- October 2022 - 87.16% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- November 2022 - 83.88% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- December 2022 - 83.21% of approved beneficiaries were paid
- January 2023 - 83.80% of approved beneficiaries were paid
Several reasons led to SRD grant payments not being paid. The DSD said payments were delayed due to challenges in completing verification checks.
Sassa is required to redo verification checks when grant beneficiaries change their grant payment details. Grant beneficiaries were not paid as these bank verifications were still pending. Some payments were returned by the bank due to challenges with some bank accounts.
Approved SRD grant applicants were also not paid due to ID verification challenges.
The DSD informed parliament that historic payments are made every month after the monthly pay period payments are completed. To date, the average payment percentage since April 2022 is almost 90% to 95% of clients being paid each month.
Members were concerned about the delays of up to two months in grant payments, as well as the lack of communication by the entities and misinformation by their competitors.
While Sassa acknowledged that communication could have been done more efficiently, they assured the committee on Social Development that they were strengthening their systems to prevent delays and would put a strategy in place to ensure that communication improved.
