Over 325 000 people who applied during the first cycle are yet to claim their R350 SRD grant.
Photo: Supplied
SASSA R350 Grant: Cosatu wants grant made permanent, upped to R624
Cosatu’s Matthew Parks said the SRD grant ‘is a critical poverty alleviation intervention’, which should be made permanent, to parliament on Friday.
Over 325 000 people who applied during the first cycle are yet to claim their R350 SRD grant.
Photo: Supplied
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) Grant should be made permanent and be increased so that it is in line with the country’s food poverty line. The union’s parliamentary coordinator, Matthew Parks, said this at the Second Appropriation Bill public hearings on Friday, 17 September.
COSATU WANTS MORE FROM SASSA
The bill like the return of the SRD grants is in the spotlight following the unrest that unfolded in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. The SRD grant returned in the wake of the violence and destruction in those provinces. The Appropriations Bill proposes the injection of more than R30 billion to deal with the aftermath of the unrest and the ongoing pandemic.
“The reinstatement of the R350 grant is a critical poverty alleviation intervention,” said Parks while making a submission before the standing committee on appropriations on Friday. “However, its recipients will not miraculously find work when it ends on 1 April 2022.”
Cosatu put its weight behind the speedy passage of the bill, which it believes will provide relief to millions of individual South Africans in need as well as businesses that suffered losses during the unrest.
The SRD grant, however, is a national issue in Cosatu’s view and therefore it should become a permanent fixture of the country’s social relief measures.
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“Our proposal on the SASSA allocations is to make the R350 grant or SRD grant permanent, to extend it beyond March 2022 and to see if we can increase it to the level of the food poverty line,” said Parks. The food poverty line is around R624, according to estimates by StatsSA.
Cosatu also said SASSA should modernise its systems and ensure that payments can be made to all recipients electronically. “Recipients should not be forced to spend days in queues at the post office,” said Parks.
On Friday, the agency announced that SRD grant recipients would now be able to change their preferred payment method whenever they wanted instead of during fixed periods as has always been the case.
