SASSA Covid-19 Grant: More People To Receive Grant Due To Amended Regulations

SASSA Covid-19 Grant: More People To Receive Grant Due To Amended Regulations

The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has announced that more people will be included to receive the SASSA Covid-19 Grant due to Amended Regulations.

According to a press statement issued by SASSA:

The low number of approved applications for the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) as compared to previous iterations was a cause for concern for both the Department of Social Development and South African Social Security Agency (SASSA). There has also been public outcry regarding some of the regulations, which were deemed to be unlawful and to unfairly exclude some of the potential applicants.

You may also want to read SASSA Reconsideration Status Check 2022 | How To Check

To this end the Department of Social Development, last week, published amended regulations which include increasing the income threshold for the means test from R350 to R624. This means that applicants who have an inflow of funds in their bank accounts of less than R624 (for that particular month) qualify to receive the grant with effect from August 2022.

SASSA welcomes this new development, and the agency is hopeful that a greater number of qualifying applicants will now have access to this grant; already at the beginning of August 2022 SASSA had received just under 12 million applications.

The Agency experienced slight delays and challenges with assessments for the month of July 2022 owing to the previous regulations requiring people to reconfirm their grants every three months, consequently, a low number of people re-confirmed their grants. However, since the new regulations have been published, the July assessments will soon be concluded.

You may also want to read How To Check Your Sassa R350 Grant Status

We are still having challenges with some payments wherein some applicants have not provided us with their banking details. We encourage all applicants to provide us with their correct bank details so that we can timeously facilitate their grant payments”, said Social Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu.

It is important to note that the payment amount of the COVID-19 SRD remains R350 per person, for each month they qualify for.