SASSA To Pay R350 Grants For April 2024
April payments for SASSA’s Special Relief of Distress grant will be done before the month ends. This comes after there were delays with February and March R350 grant payments.
April payments for SASSA’s Special Relief of Distress grant will be done without any challenges. However, there has been a delay in the February and March payments for SASSA’s R350 grant and the reason behind this is said to be the move to a new financial year.
April payments won’t be a challenge to pay because the grant was extended in January which affects February and March’s payments.
SASSA has had to validate clients who applied during those months. If beneficiaries were supposed to get paid in March but it was delayed and paid in April, this would then have reflected an irregular expenditure.
To solve this problem, SASSA then had to go to National Treasury to ask permission to roll over those funds so that they can make those delayed February and March payments.
Explaining the delay, SASSA CEO, Totsie Memela, said that the challenge they had is that the R350 grant had a number of extensions. One in October until January and another extension in January which finishes in April:
THE CHALLENGE WE HAVE IS THAT EACH TIME WE HAVE GRANTS WE THEREFORE HAVE TO EXTEND ALL THE DIFFERENT CONTRACTS WE HAVE WHENEVER THERE’S AN EXTENSION. WE THEREFORE HAVE TO EXTEND THE CONTRACTS WE HAD, PARTICULARLY WITH BANKS THAT WOULD DO THOSE PEOPLE THAT HAVE BEEN DECLINED IN THE PAST BECAUSE OF OTHER CHALLENGES WE MAY HAVE FOUND IN OTHER DATABASES.
Some clients who were declined and appealed might also have payments owed to them from October and SASSA is in the process of clearing these payments.
April is the last month for applications and appeals to be done for the R350 Covid grant.
The South African Social Agency (SASSA) released the various payment dates for the month of March 2024, they are as follows:
- Older Person’s Grants 6 April 2024
- This includes any grants linked to these accounts
- Disability Grants 7 April 2024
- This includes any grants linked to these accounts
- Foster Care Grants 8 April 2024
- Care Dependency Grants 8 April 2024
- Child Support Grants 8 April 2024
“The President declared a National State of Disaster as a result of the Covid-19 global pandemic. In this regard he introduced a special Covid 19 Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD) of R350 per month … to be paid to individuals who are currently unemployed, do not receive any form of income, social grant or UIF payment etc.”
