Johannesburg - While Finance Minister Tito Mboweni is expected to deliver the much anticipated Medium-Term Budget today, new research by the University of Johannesburg (UJ) shows South Africans support the continuation of the R350 Covid relief fund.
This was among the findings of the ongoing coronavirus impact survey conducted by UJ’s Centre for Social Change and the Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) Developmental, Capable and Ethical State. This is the second round of results released.
According to the survey, hunger has become one of the biggest themes about the national lockdown to curb Covid-19. About 41% of survey participants reported that they had personally gone to bed hungry since lockdown, while 27% also indicated that someone else in the household had experienced this.
This is an increase from the round-1 survey results which indicated that 38% of people went to bed hungry and 22% said someone else in their household went to bed hungry.
Some of the other things that households reported being worried about included reliable access to electricity and water supply.
Fifty-one percent of respondents said they had electricity supply problems, and 21% battled with access to water during the lockdown. Getting public transport when needed was mentioned by 18% of respondents.
The researchers also gave participants a set of 13 policy proposals and asked to indicate which they favoured. From this list, food parcels received 70% support, increasing the value of social grants received 69%, and the R350 Covid relief grant was favoured by 69% of the participants.
“This speaks to the resolute demand for social protection measures to address the lack of cash income and basic food needs that has intensified under lockdown.
“This was followed, in descending order, by the introduction of a basic income grant (61%), payment holiday on accounts, rent, taxes (46%), allowing people to stop paying and be refunded school fees for the time schools are closed (44%), and providing free cellphone data (41%),” the researchers said.
The Star