Sassa to process Covid-19 grant beneficiaries
Johannesburg – The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) will screen applicants to confirm their
qualification for the recently announced special Social Relief of Distress grant.
The Covid-19 unemployment grant of R350 a month is for the unemployed, who do not receive any other social
grant or UIF payment, to be paid out for the next six months.
Sassa CEO Busisiwe Memela – Khambula said the databases will include the SA Revenue Service (Sars), the
Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
“They will use an SSD or a WhatsApp process to register. You are going to be able to indicate I’m not employed,
I’m not getting UIF, I’m not getting an NSFAS fund, I’m a South African; then we will check these details against
the databases. The system will automatically say whether you qualify or not; then we will put you to the back-end
and process the payment,” Memela – Khambula said.
She added that foreign nationals
who have legal papers to be in South Africa would qualify.
Memela – Khambula said after registration they hope to start doing the payments at the beginning of May.
“Once processing is done, we will pay at that time, and won’t wait until the end of the month. When people get
registered, we need to push out the payment and do it once a month for the next six months. We shall use three
possible processes; an e-voucher, a mobile money transfer, if you have a bank account, we’ll put the money into
the account,” she said.