By Staff Reporter
POLOKWANE-More than 18 million permanent grants are distributed to individuals in South Africa every month. Beneficiaries would be happy to know that the monetary value of these Sassa grants will increase from 1 October 2023.
The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) distributes grants in terms of the Social Assistance Act. Under the framework of the act, Sassa oversees the implementation of various social assistance programs. This includes the distribution of social grants to vulnerable people living in South Africa.
Permanent grants distributed by Sassa include the Older Persons grant, War Veterans grant, Disability grant, Foster Child grant, Care Dependency grant, Child Support Grant, Top-up Child Support grant and the Grant in Aid.
During the budget speech in February, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced two sets of increases for social grants for the 2023 financial year.
The first increase was effective as of in April 2023 and now the amount of money received by grant beneficiaries will increase again in October 2023 by R10. However, this excludes the Child Support Top-up grant.
This means that from 1 October, the old age grant, the Care Dependency Grant and the disability grant will be R2090. The War Veterans Grant will be R2110, the Foster Child Grant will be R1130, Child Support Grant and the Grant in Aid will be R510.
Furthermore, Godongwana also revealed that spending on child support grants and old age grants received the largest proportion of government spending. This is as the state anticipates the growth of beneficiaries over the next three years.
The minister added that spending on social grants will increase from R233 billion in 2022/23 to R248.4 billion in 2025/26 due to increases in the number of beneficiaries and the value of the grants.
Unfortunately, these increases do not include the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant, also commonly referred to as the R350 grant. According to the Department of Social Development, the lack of an increase is due to “fiscal constraints”. The Department is said to have approached the National Treasury requesting that the grant be increased but that “the request was not favourably considered due to fiscal constraints”.
Both the Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu and Deputy Director-General at the department, Brenda Sibeko have spoken about wanting the SRD grant increase. However, there has been no official word that the grant will be increased and it currently stays at the value of R350 per month.
Sassa payments for the R350/SRD grants will be paid towards the end of every month. The processing of grants take place during the latter stages of the month as Sassa conducts various verification checks to ensure the grant applicant meets the qualifying criteria for the grant.
The October 2023 SRD grant payment period will be from 25 October 2023 to 31 October 2023.
