Civil society ‘delighted’ over increased social grants

Civil society has welcomed the news that social welfare grants are being scaled up in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday announced government would be directing R50 billion towards “relieving the plight of those who are most desperately affected by the coronavirus”.

“This means that child support grant beneficiaries will receive an extra R300 in May and from June to October they will receive an additional R500 each month,” he said.

“All other grant beneficiaries will receive an extra R250 per month for the next six months. In addition, a special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress grant of R350 a month for the next 6 months will be paid to individuals who are currently unemployed and do not receive any other form of social grant or UIF payment”.

Ramaphosa added that the department of social development would issue “the requirements needed to access and apply for this funding”.

Earlier this month a group of academics and civil society leaders wrote to the president, motivating for “an urgent increase to the value of the child support grant by R500 for a period of six months”.

Among them was Joan van Niekerk, who was on Wednesday “delighted” that their call had been heeded.

“It’s just so very necessary,” Van Niekerk said. “I think it will provide a lot of the relief we have been asking for, especially as there have been huge problems with the distribution of food parcels and many allegations of mismanagement of the food distribution.”

The Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) also last week made a call for government to “implement without delay a temporary increase in the child support grant and initiate a special grant for pregnant women”.

“The President has addressed most of the issues we raised in terms of providing direct relief for the most vulnerable,” the executive director of Casac, Lawson Naidoo, said on Wednesday, “Particularly with regards to the social alleviation measures”.

On Tuesday night, Ramaphosa conceded that government simply did not have the food distribution capacity to meet the “huge” need occasioned by the pandemic.

“The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) will within days implement a technology-based solution to roll out food assistance at scale through vouchers and cash transfers to ensure that help reaches those who need it faster and more efficiently,” he said.

And Naidoo on Wednesday welcomed this, too.

“It’s a very welcome decision by government to institute these mechanisms,” he said, speaking broadly of Tuesday night’s address. “Ideally they should have done [it] at the start of the lockdown to avoid suffering”.

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