Cape Town - The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has made the first payments of the government’s social relief of distress (SRD) R350 grant.
Sassa says it received 8 931 375 applications from all nine provinces, 41% of whom were men and 59% women.
Further disbursements to applicants are set to continue over the next few days.
Applications for this SRD grant opened on August 6.
The grant is set to benefit unemployed citizens, most of whom lost their jobs when Covid-19 struck in 2020.
“Payments of this grant are channelled through direct deposits into approved beneficiaries’ bank accounts, mobile money transfers through cellphones and through the SA Post Office.
“The payment process for all those approved starts on August 25, but will be done over the coming days. Not everyone should be expected to be paid today,” Sassa said.
To avoid overcrowding at post offices during payment of approved recipients, a joint strategy was put in place by Sassa and the SA Post Office, where the last three digits of approved beneficiaries’ identity numbers will be used for payment collection on a specific day of the week.
Approved applicants are urged to first wait for an SMS confirming that the grant is available before approaching the post office and to avoid going to the post office to just check if by any chance the grant is available.
“The function for all applicants to start checking their status on the system will be available later this week. This function has not been available, because Sassa has kept the channels open to cope with the high number of applications being received.
“Please bear with us for any inconvenience this might have caused,” they said.
The R350 grant will not be paid on Public Holidays, weekends and when normal monthly social grants payments take place.
Applicants are urged to only visit the post office to collect their grants if they have received a payment notification SMS.
Cape Times