Sassa insists R350 won’t be collected at post offices
SASSA has reiterated its call to R350 grant recipients not to collect their grants at all post offices across the country.
Yesterday, the Cabinet also urged the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant recipients to reapply, following the introduction of new regulations governing applications and eligibility for the grant.
Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele said the applications could be lodged on the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) website: https://srd.sassa.gov.za
Gungubele said the application system opened on April 23 and was a fully digital process to enable quick turnaround times.
“The relief grant is an important safety net for needy families who would otherwise be devastated by poverty and unemployment. Government is committed to providing social assistance to the most vulnerable so that they can meet their basic needs,” Gungubele said.
While Sassa and the Cabinet were directing these recipients to approach some of the major retail companies to collect the funds, a court action is looming against the South African Post Office (Sapo) to reinstate the payment of the R350 grants.
The court action was revealed by the DA’s Solly Malatsi and Bridget Masango, who said they would write to the Ministers of Digital Technologies and Communications and Social Development to urge them to reverse the senseless decision by Sapo to no longer pay the R350 SRD grant at its branches.
“This move will no doubt disadvantage millions of poor South Africans who rely on this grant to provide for their families by forcing them to incur unnecessary additional travel expenses to access this grant outside of the communities they live in. Many rural communities struggle with access to post office branches as more and more branches are closed countrywide.
“The insistence by Sapo that its decision to stop paying the social relief grant at its branches will help ‘alleviate long queues’ is not good enough,” Malatsi said.
He said at a time when the cost of living was at an all-time high, poor South Africans need their government to provide them with the relief they need to make ends meet, instead of suffocating them with additional expenses, all in pursuit of reducing long queues.
“The long queues at post office branches are a result of the entity’s chronic inefficiency, shortage of staff and obsolete technological infrastructure and not because of the beneficiaries of the social relief grants. To blame those queues on the latter is to gaslight poor South Africans,” he said.
Malatsi said the DA would leverage all the parliamentary channels to oppose this move and if need be, would pursue legal action.
Replying to the pending court action, Sassa national spokesperson Paseka Letsatsi said Sapo’s decision not to pay SRD grants was beyond their control.