Cape Town - The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) said more people can apply for the Covid-19 social relief of distress (SRD) grant as regulations have been amended.
It said the low number of approved applications for the SRD grant compared to previous iterations caused concern for Sassa as well as the Department of Social Development.
It has noted the public outcry about some of the regulations which were deemed unlawful and unfairly excluded potential applicants.
Last week, the Department of Social Development published amended regulations which included increasing the income threshold for means test from R350 to R624.
“This means that applicants who have an inflow of funds in their bank accounts of less than R624 (for that particular month) qualify to receive the grant with effect from August 2022.
“Sassa welcomes this new development, and the agency is hopeful that a greater number of qualifying applicants will now have access to this grant; already at the beginning of August 2022 Sassa had received just under 12 million applications,” it said.
Sassa confirmed it experienced delays and challenges with assessments for July owing to the previous regulations which required people to reconfirm their grants every three months and this led to a low number of people reconfirming their grants.
However, with the amended regulations in place, the July assessments will be concluded soon.
Social Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu said the department is still having challenges with some payments wherein some applicants have not provided banking details.
“We encourage all applicants to provide us with their correct bank details so that we can timeously facilitate their grant payments,” Zulu said.
Sassa said it was important for applicants to note the SRD grant remains at R350 per person for each month they qualify.
robin.francke@inl.co.za
IOL