The Department of Social Development (DSD) has recently published proposed amendments to the eligibility criteria for recipients of the R350 grant. The agency has explained that it has made this decision based on a number of reasons.
Among its various responsibilities relating to ensuring that beneficiaries receive their social grant payments, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) is also tasked with disbursing the R350 grant to eligible applicants.
However, due to incidents that exposed some exploited vulnerabilities in how Sassa processes grant payments as well as issues relating to eligibility for the grant, the agency has proposed changes to the grant’s eligibility requirements.
This comes after the Minister of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, announced proposed rules exclusively for recipients of the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) Grant, which lowered the criteria for eligibility.
Out of 11.4 million applications, only 5 million were approved. Sassa saw that applications were lower than in the previous round, with the agency receiving close to 16 million applications during the previous cycle of the R350 grant.
While discussing the reasons behind Sassa’s proposed amendments to R350 grant requirements, the agency’s Executive Manager for Grants, Brenton Van Vrede said that there is a wide of factors that have resulted in the rejection of certain applicants including discrepancies in provided bank account information.
He further stated that, of the key proposed amendments, published by the Minister and now made available for public comment until 29 July 2024, is for the R350 grant to be increased to R624, which is the food poverty-line threshold.
R624 is the food poverty line so this change will allow for anyone who is living below the food poverty line to qualify for the grant, as long as they meet the other qualifying criteria.
Van Vrede reiterated that, although these amendments would result in a relaxed eligibility requirement, the R624 reflects the income threshold and not that of the R350 grant and as a result would have no effect on the SRD grant payout amount.
