The department of social development is working on a proposal to extend the R350 social relief of distress grant until government finalises the basic income grant. 

“We are engaging different departments, including the National Treasury, around how to address the continuing income need after the end of the financial year,” said deputy director-general for comprehensive social security Brenda Sibeko. 

The National Council of Provinces received a briefing from the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) on Tuesday on the R350 grant that will end this financial year.

In his state of the nation address in February, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that he would be extending the R350 grant until March 2023 and that the government was working on a more permanent plan. 

The government introduced the grant in 2020 to help people who lost their livelihoods during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The consideration is how to create a direct basic income support programme for people and that’s what the department is working on,” said Sibeko.

“Decisions have not been made yet, but one of the things we are taking cognisance of is that even if the policy gets approved, we still need to write the legislation and that takes time. So one of the things we have proposed is that the grant should be continued beyond this financial year while we get the final policy and legislative processes in place.”

Sibeko told MPs that Sassa had completed the grant approvals for the April and May payments.

“People might not have received the money if there are problems with their bank accounts and so on, but we have dealt with the April applications — they were dealt with in June.”

On why some of the grant applications had been declined and needed to be appealed, Sibeko said the appeals were because many people were reflected with the Unemployment Insurance Fund and SA Revenue Service database, when they were no longer there.

She said the appeals tribunal has a 90-day time frame to review applications for the databases to be updated.

Executive manager of grants administration Brenton Van Vrede said there had been problems with making some payments after the Post Office was removed as a pay point.

“We don’t use the Post Office any more but we have expanded the payments through Post Bank outlets with the network of merchants that are associated with Post Bank.”

He conceded that the system had teething problems.

“Often what happens is that people change their phone numbers and when you apply for the grant, you apply using one phone number and we send an SMS to that phone number, but then when you withdraw your money you have another number.”

Most of these issues had been resolved, he said.

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