Africa-Press – South-Africa. Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu expects the number of people who receive the R350 monthly social relief distress (SRD) grant to increase to 10.5 million.
Currently, around 7.5 million people receive the SRD grant.
Addressing the media on her department’s plans for October, Zulu said changes to the regulations governing the pay-out of the R350 SRD grant would allow more people to qualify.
The changes increased the income threshold for the means test from R350 to the food poverty line of R624 per month.
Previously, any person who received or earned more than R350 per month would have been disqualified from receiving the grant. With the new adjustment of the threshold to R624, more people will now qualify.
Zulu said: “Having made the changes to the Disaster Management Act, we see that the numbers of people being paid the SRD are increasing.”
“Most importantly, we increased the income means threshold from R350 to R624, and today we can announce that 7.5 million are receiving the benefit on a monthly basis, and we are approaching the level of that we will be committed to, namely 10.5 million people.”
When the changes were first proposed in July, Zulu highlighted concerns about the number of applications who were being rejected due to the low threshold.
“Out of 11.4 million applicants for the month of June, only 5.2 million beneficiaries were approved. This represents less than 50% of the applications,” she said at the time.
In a presentation to Parliament in May, the department said a staggering 31% of South Africans relied on social grants. This included old age pension pay-outs, disability, child support, foster child, and care dependency grants.
The expected three million increase for those dependent on the R350 SRD grant means more than 40% of the country’s population would be relying on some form of social assistance from the government.
The SRD grant was first introduced in May 2020 under the national state of disaster regulations. It was due to end in March 2022 but was extended to March 2023.
Zulu also announced as part of social development month, the department called on family members caring for orphans to apply for a top-up childcare grant.
The department has introduced the top-up, which increases the amount received by orphans to R720.
Zulu said this provision was introduced on 1 June 2022 and allowed for relatives caring for orphans to have access to the R480 child grant plus an additional R240 top-up without having to go through the foster care system.
“Caregivers only have to prove that both parents of the child under their care are deceased and no longer have to go through social workers or get a court order to prove this,” she added.
This year, social development month is being commemorated under the theme, “United in the Fight Against Poverty and Other Social ills”.
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