The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) revealed that they are facing a backlog of Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant payments. This has meant that many of the grants applicants have not received money during months they were meant to.
Earlier this year, the legislation under which the SRD grant is provided was changed from the Disaster Management Act and is now provided under the Social Assistance Act.
This change in legislation has resulted in SRD grant payment being delayed, as several changes were made to the grant's qualifying criteria. This includes the introduction of a new means test to determine eligibility.
A consequence of the changing legislation meant that Sassa is behind with processing SRD grant payments to clients. This meant that grant payments for particular months were paid during a different month.
Here’s The Reason Why Your July SRD Grant Application Is Pending
Sassa said, “The applications with a July status of pending will be updated after the August 2022 payments to the applicable outcome”.
August 2022 SRD grant payments were also put on hold as a new income threshold was being introduced. This delay was to ensure that more people would qualify for the SRD grant under the new income threshold.
Sassa’s Brenton Van Vrede explained that if that amendment in August wasn't made, less people would have qualified for the grant.
They said, “We would have seen a very huge fall off in the grant in July. So we withheld the July payment a little bit so that the amendments could be published, those amendments were published in mid-August and then we assessed the July payments towards the end of August.
Sassa has apologised to all SRD grant applicants and beneficiaries for the challenges they are experiencing relating to the grant and are working to pay remaining SRD grant payments.
