Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu has told MPs that her department has approved nearly 8 million applications for the monthly R350 social relief grant.
The Special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant would have lapsed in the April this year, having been initially implemented in May 2020 for six months. The President and the Ministers of Finance and Social Development subsequently announced multiple extensions, first for three months, then two for one year each.
Presently, the grant is set to end in 2024, with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana raising alarm bells in his Medium-term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) over the instability the grant risks creating for the country’s fiscus, given the shrinking tax base, and the opportunity cost of sacrificing some government programmes in order to sustain the growing grant payments.
Minister Zulu told MPs last week that between R7.4 million and R7.8 million of the funds ‘are approved every month’.
‘All our payments and statements are up to date and valid for one month up to the next. As far as the payments are concerned, about 95% of the approved applicants were paid’.
Shortly after the end of the first cycle of the grant in May 2022, the total number of applications had reached 10.2 million. This number has since declined, as government raised the threshold for eligible monthly income from R624 to R350.
The grant criteria also excludes recipients of other social grants as it was specifically aimed at subsiding lost jobs and incomes as a result of the pandemic lockdowns.
[Image: Jenny Friedrichs from Pixabay]