460 sassa grant 2023-2024

Sassa admits that no R350 grants were given out in April or May.

Payments made under the social relief of distress grant program have been halted while the government develops a new system. 10.6 million applications for the grant’s latest round have been submitted.
Sassa anticipates starting award payments again in mid-June.

Payments for April and May have not yet been made to the 10.6 million applicants who submitted applications for the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) award in the new round that started on April 1.
After distributing other social funds, the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) intends to begin issuing payments in the middle of June. The grant’s duration has been extended to March 2023 thanks to an increase in its availability in the February budget.
The delay resulted from the Department of Social Development’s choice to introduce a means test for the grant’s future phase of administration. Even if it originates from a family member, anyone receiving R350 or more per month will not be qualified. Sassa has to establish new contracts with banks who will check bank accounts for income in order to put the test into force.

In a presentation made to Parliament last week, the department and Sassa said:

“Sassa needs to hire banks in order to make the means testing possible. Although this process was finished the year before, the contracts couldn’t be signed without the finance minister’s approval. On April 30, 2022, the finance minister’s approval was received. However, the agreement had additional requirements that the bank’s legal department had to work through, which caused delays in the contracts’ completion.

460 sassa grant 2023-2024

As the old means test only disqualified individuals who were employed, the award is meant to help the most underprivileged sections of society. The SRD received R44 billion from the February budget, which is enough to cover 10.5 million people’s service requirements. The office claimed that this time around, there were typically more candidates.

SOCIAL GRANTS