Just less than 6-million poor people who rely on the R350 Covid-19 social relief grant for their survival will not get their March payment until the end of April because of delays experienced by the government agency that pays them.
At end-April the beneficiaries will get a double payment for March and April, a spokesperson for the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa), Paseka Letsatsi, said on Thursday.
The temporary R350 monthly grant, which cost the state R18bn in 2020/2021, is aimed at unemployed people who receive no other form of government assistance. It was set up in 2020 as part of the government’s economic and social relief package intended to cushion the effect of the hard lockdown on the economy. The grant was extended for three months to end-April by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his state of the nation address on February 11. The Treasury has allocated R2.5bn for the grant for 2021/2022 to pay for this extension.
Sassa said in a statement on Thursday that the delays related to payments for March and April and that this was due to the transition in the government’s financial year, which ends on March 31.
“The end of March is the end of the financial year for government and various administrative tasks are required before any payments, which relate to the previous financial year, can be made. Sassa is currently busy with these end of financial year tasks which has delayed payment,” Sassa CEO Totsie Memela said.
She said at the time when Sassa learnt about the extension of the grant in February, all its administration systems had already closed down on the understanding that the grant would terminate at the end of January.
“The systems were reactivated immediately on receiving confirmation of the funding for the extension and the application channel was once again operational as from 13 February. A total of 86,363 new applications were received for February alone.
“Every single one of the more than 10-million applications for this grant are validated on a monthly basis, to ensure that payments are made to applicants who do qualify for the grant. Payments for February were thus made at the end of February and early March 2021. The applications for March were validated as usual after the payments for February had been completed but could not be extracted for payment before 31 March 2021.
“All private and public institutions whose processes constitute dependencies have been roped in and are working tirelessly with Sassa to stabilise the situation,” Memela said.
She gave the assurance that the grant would be paid to those affected as soon as the administrative processes had been completed.
Letsatsi said Sassa was working with the department of social development and the Treasury to ensure that the problems were solved and that payments could be made at end-April.
Apart from delays in payment of the Covid-19 grant, many beneficiaries experience delays in getting their grants at post offices due to long queues.
This is not the first time beneficiaries have been left high and dry — Sassa experienced delays early in the year in the payment of the temporary disability grants. More than 200,000 beneficiaries were left in limbo after their grant payments lapsed at the end of December.
TimesLIVE reported this week that former public protector Thuli Madonsela added her voice to calls for Ramaphosa, finance minister Tito Mboweni and social development minister Lindiwe Zulu to extend and increase the social relief of distress grant until it is turned into a basic income grant.
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