Cape Town – Frustrated residents have expressed disappointment with the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) as they have still not received the R350 Covid-19 relief grant the government promised.
The R350 grant President Cyril Ramaphosa had announced in April was meant for unemployed citizens during the lockdown.
At the beginning of August, 4.4 million people had received the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grants, although an estimated 8 to 15 million people were eligible, according to a grant-tracking campaign, the Pay The Grants campaign, to amplify voices of people left out or awaiting the lifeline.
Daddy Mabe, who was part of the campaign, said it wanted to hold the government accountable for its failure to implement the R350 Covid SRD grant by building a record of people’s experiences as they struggled to access the grant.
"While some improvements have been made, relief measures have been extremely slow and full of challenges, translating into widespread hunger for months,” he said.
Sassa chief executive Totsie Memela said the window period for preferred method of payment was scheduled for August 31 to September 6, 24 hours a day. In a recent statement, Sassa said it had introduced new flexible methods recipients could use to receive their R350 grant, which would be paid until the end of October.
EFF Western Cape secretary Banzi Dambuza said most people had not received the grants.
DA Social Development spokesperson Bridget Masango, said in a reply to a DA parliamentary question, that the Department of Social Development (DSD) said it paid six technical advisers a total of R2 534 831, between May and October 2018.
Masango said those advisers clearly did not fix any of the agency’s challenges as reports confirmed Sassa was drowning under a backlog of 300 000 emails and 4 000 attempted phone calls a day from desperate people needing assistance with the SRD grant.
“Sassa now hopes to solve this dire situation by outsourcing the flood of calls and emails to a new call centre that is expected to deal with 90% of the emails and phone calls with an 80% success rate,” Masango said.
She said had Sassa successfully implemented the suggestions for which it paid so dearly in 2018, vulnerable South Africans might have had more of a fighting chance.
Cape Argus