Picture: Flickr/GovernmentZA
Approximately 60% of the SRD grant of the applications are young people, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has announced.
The agency has blamed the high rate of unemployment, saying it was a great cause for concern.
“This correlates with the unemployment rate among youth, which is approximately 60% of all the applicants (youth and non-youth), approximately 5% hold tertiary qualifications,” said Sassa.
Although there was a slight decline in the number of unemployed youth in the first quarter, the youth remained vulnerable in the labour market.
During the first quarter the total number of unemployed youth between the ages of 15 and 34 declined by 0.1% (5,000) to 4.7 million in the fourth quarter and a noticeable increase in the number of youth in employment of 5.0% (244,000), resulting in a decrease in youth unemployment of 1.2 percentage points to 47.8% in the first quarter.
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“The agency remains committed to playing its part in fighting the scourge of unemployment,” said Sassa.
“Sassa has made great strides in its efforts to alleviate poverty and provide a lifeline to the most vulnerable in society through the Covid-19 SRD.”
The grant was introduced to target citizens of working age who are not accommodated in the social assistance safety net.
Tabling the department’s budget vote in the National Assembly in May, Minister Lindiwe Zulu said the Department of Social Development would allocate R44 billion for the Covid-19 SRD grant for the 2022/23 financial year.
The current application period – April 2022 to March 2023 – opened on April 23rd. Since then, more than 8.1 million South Africans applied for the grant.
Zulu said: “I assure all qualifying applicants they will be in receipt of their payments for this iteration of the grant by June”.
The R44 million allocation will ensure some 10 million approved applicants will receive the Covid-19 SRD grant every month.
Sassa said it had made progress with regards to payments for this special grant, with approximately 5,298,817 applications already approved, as at 19 July 2022 and 4,088,873 of those have received payment.
“The agency would like to reiterate that Covid-19 SRD applications are strictly done online and not at Sassa offices.”
Meanwhile, Sassa has announced grant payment dates for August:
“There is no need to rush to withdraw cash on the first day. Once the money is in the account, it will remain there until it is needed.”
Additional reporting by Cheryl Kahla
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