President Cyril Ramaphosa says while there have been delays in paying out the R350 grant to millions of beneficiaries, the payments will resume next week.
The so-called Social Relief of Distress was not paid to its beneficiaries in April and May after the government changed the criteria for the payments, according to the Johannesburg based Institute for Economic Justice. More than 10 million beneficiaries of the stipend have been affected, it said in a statement this week.
Responding to the state’s failure to pay SRD grants for two months, President Cyril Ramaphosa said after his Budget Vote speech last week: “I have now been given a report that they are going to start paying next week and they will be backdating because our people have been relying on this,” he said on Friday.”
Ramaphosa announced during the 2022 state of the nation address that the social relief grant would be extended for another 12 months even though the country was not under a national state of disaster.
“There were problems. When this whole R350 grant started I got involved with the officials and it was concerning. I kept asking how we are going to be able to pay this amount and they said, ‘Mr President we are working with a few service providers and in the end we might have to do it ourselves,’ and it really concerned me at the time.
“The applications started coming through and it was six million at the time and I kept asking will we be able to pay, and they said, ‘Mr President we are able to pay. We have inaugurated a new system from scratch, and we will be able to pay and people who have cellphones will do this and that,” said Ramaphosa.
After last week’s Cabinet meeting, Minister in the Presidency Mondli Ngungubele said: “This government will always fulfil whatever undertaking it has with regard to the SRD. If there was a period of non-payment… on behalf of this government, we will make that apology. But as long as those SRDs are due, in line with the President’s commitment, they will be paid.”
