Staff Reporter.
File:Unemployed beneficiaries in lines to get their Sassa special Covid-19 social relief grants at Thulamahashe mall. Photo: Oris Mnisi.
More than five million people have submitted their applications for the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) revealed on Friday.
The agency said that the highest number of applicants were in the 20 to 24 age group, followed by 25 to 29, lamenting that this was a sign of higher unemployment among young people.
When moving the country to adjusted level 3 of the lockdown, President Cyril Ramaphosa also reinstated the SRD grant, adding that caregivers who were receiving the child support grant were also eligible for the SRD grant.
Sassa added two new channels, hoping to ease the pressure on the website and the WhatsApp line: an app option called gov.chat, and Facebook messenger.
Last Friday, Sassa CEO Busisiwe Memela-Khambula said that their application channels (WhatsApp and the website) experienced massive traffic 45 minutes after the opening of the applications, resulting to a system crash.
Since then the department has expanded its application channels and added gov.chat and Facebook messenger in an attempt to ease the pressure on the website and the WhatsApp line.
However, there have been some concerns raised about Sassa’s ability to handle the volume of applications, with the DA saying that they were worried that the agency’s systems would be overwhelmed.
The DA’s MP and its spokesperson on social development Bridget Masango said that the reliability of the databases used to vet applicants was also a problem as people had complained that they had been workless for years, yet their names remain on these databases, excluding them from the grant.