Pretoria - The number of people who still receive the R350 Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress grant on a monthly basis has dropped from 10.5 million people to nearly 7.5 million, Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu said yesterday.
Zulu also spoke about a number of initiatives, including the child support top-up and the R350 relief grants.
She said the department needed to be cautious not to over-commit the government to levels of funding that were beyond the allocated budget.
She said whereas the Disaster Management Act enabled for the development to pay the Covid-19 grant to 10.5 million beneficiaries within a short space of time, the lifting of the National State of Disaster in March challenged the department to immediately develop new regulations under the Social Assistance Act.
These changes necessitated that the provisions of the Public Finance Management Act be brought into effect in so far as the use of allocated budgets were concerned. Consequently, the continued payment of this benefit required additional qualifying criteria be introduced.
This act required the department stay within the allocated R44 billion budget so they introduced additional qualifying criteria. These included the introduction of the means test threshold of R350 for all applicants.
This was implemented by checking the bank accounts of each applicant monthly to establish if they were receiving income flows valued at R350 or more into their bank accounts from other sources. It was later adjusted to R624, in line with the estimated Food Poverty Line for 2022.
“With regard to payments, we are still having challenges with beneficiaries who upload incorrect bank details. We also urge all approved applicants who have not yet been paid to check the status of their bank details’ verification, and if needs be correct their banking details.
“It is in the interests of those without income, the unemployable and vulnerable sections of our population for the implementation of the grant to improve. We note that the vast majority of South Africans prefer to be in employment,” said Zulu.
She said because of their academic and research partners, the grant continued to generate interesting data upon which exciting social policy research projects could be initiated, for instance towards refining the reading of official poverty statistics.
“I am certain that researchers will investigate the relevant demographic and policy discrepancies and nuances in this data. Researchers interested in studying poverty data will be able to reflect on this data and provide us with informative analyses and reflections. The social development portfolio is waiting to hear from interested research projects with whom public-to-public partnerships can be entered into.”
She said the department was encouraging all relatives caring for orphaned children to come forward and apply for the Child Support Grant Top-Up at their nearest South African Social Security Agency offices.
The grant top-up is not new; the additional R240 to the standard R480 is enabled by a 2015 Cabinet-approved policy. The provisions of this policy enables the minister to introduce the higher value child-support grant top-up for orphans, she said.
“By top-up we mean an additional amount of R240 that supplements the standard Child Support Grant amount of R480. Only relatives caring for an orphaned child can apply for and receive the Child Support Grant Top-Up of R720 per child per month.
“All caregivers of orphans should know that the Child Support Grant Top-Up is available at all offices for them to apply. Social workers’ reports or court orders are not needed to access the top-up.”
South Africans needed to keep in mind the only caregiver who needed to see a social worker before they could approach the agency were children under-18 looking after their orphaned siblings in child-headed households.
Pretoria News