The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), says it has successfully commenced with paying out the first batch of applicants for the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD R350 Grant) on Wednesday, 25 August 2021.
The applications for this SRD grant opened on 06 August 2021 and is set to benefit the unemployed citizens, most of whom lost their jobs when COVID-19 struck in 2020. By 18 August, SASSA had received 8 931 375 applications from all nine provinces, 41% of whom were from males and 59% being female applicants.
“Payments of this grant are channeled through direct deposits into approved beneficiaries’ bank accounts, mobile money transfers through cell phones and through the South African Post Office,” sassa said.
The agency said the payment process for all those approved starts on 25 August 2021, but will be done over the coming days.
To avoid over-crowding at post offices during payment of approved recipients, a joint strategy was put in place by SASSA and SAPO.
“The last three digits of approved beneficiaries’ identity numbers will be used for payment collection on a specific day of the week. This will help minimize the spread of the COVID-19 infections and allowing for social distancing on pay days,” it said.
“Most importantly, if a person has not received an SMS from SASSA notifying them that the grant is available for collection, it means the grant is not available yet. In other words, every approved applicant must first wait for an SMS confirming that the grant is available before approaching the post office.”
Applicants are advised to avoid going to the post office to just check if by any chance the grant is available. The grant will not be available if it is not the day of the week when SAPO uses the last three digits of your ID number to pay.
“The function for all applicants to start checking their status on the system will be available later this week. This function has not been available, because SASSA has kept the channels open to cope with the high number of applications being received. Please bear with us for any inconvenience this might have caused.”
