According to GroundUp, cybercrime, problems with verifying bank details and interrupted connections are some of the reasons why payments of the R350 social relief of distress grant are erratic. 

During a parliamentary briefing on the payment of social grants on Wednesday, Zulu said on average between 7,4 and 7,8 million people are approved every month for the R350 grant. But, she said, the proportion of people approved who actually get paid is declining, from 95% to 85%.

'R44 billion social grant budget'

The DSD has a budget of R44 billion a year to pay a total of about 10,5 million people. 

"Payments is one area we are still struggling with," says the executive manager of the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), Brenton van Vrede. 

He says that in November 2022, a total of 7,806,571 people were approved, of whom only 6,548,044 were paid. In December 2022, a total of 7,851,590 beneficiaries were approved and 6,533,009 were paid. By January 2023, although 7,487,351 beneficiaries had been approved, only 6,274,486 had been paid. 

He said there were problems verifying beneficiaries’ ID numbers, bank accounts and cell phone numbers. 

"Because this is a purely digital system, we have no interaction with the client, so it’s very difficult for us to determine if the person applying with the ID number is the actual person applying for the grant or if someone who has obtained that ID number fraudulently is trying to apply for a grant."

He says delays are also caused by bank verification failures. "This may be due to beneficiaries having punched the wrong number, switched a digit around, or the name and ID don’t match and the verification of the bank account fails."

Van Vrede said they also struggled to pay beneficiaries who opted for cellphone payments, because it was "a lot more difficult" to verify that the cell number belonged to the applicant. 

He said Sassa also battles to access government databases to check whether an applicant qualifies for the R350 grant. "We’ve had some challenges with the UIF databases at least twice in the last nine months where we had to work with databases that were three months old. Then, when we do get the updated databases, we have to rerun all the assessments."

'Malicious cyber attacks'

Zulu said during the festive season, she had received "countless frantic calls and messages" from social grant beneficiaries across the country complaining that they could not get their grant money "due to connectivity issues and malicious cyber attacks".

Neo Moja from the Postbank’s project management office said since taking over the grant payments contract from the South African Post Office (Sapo), the Postbank has faced connectivity and network challenges during payment runs, leading to failed transactions at ATMs and retail outlets. 

He said the problem had worsened following a decision by Sapo in October 2022 to stop the processing of grants through biometrics. 

In December 2022, serious cyber attacks meant Postbank had to temporarily stop transactions at ATMs "to focus on this malicious activity". Cybercrime experts had been brought in and a forensic investigation had been launched. 

Zulu says a task team has been formed with representatives of the DSD, the Department of Communication and Digital Technologies, Sassa, Sapo and the Postbank. "If we want to focus on this issue, we need to pull everybody into one room and be able to share what the challenges are and what we are going to do." 

'More than 13 million applied for grant'

The South African reports that more than 13 million people applied for the grant in January alone - mostly from KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Limpopo. 

According to Sassa, it is mostly young people who receive the grant. 

In providing a breakdown of the SRD grant recipients, Sassa revealed that the majority of those receiving the R350 grant are women.

At least 60% of recipients are between the ages of 18 and 35 years - and at least 45% of them have a grade 12 certificate.

The Minister also revealed that the number of unemployed young people with tertiary qualifications seeking access to the social relief of distress grant has increased by nearly 20% in the past five months.

According to the department, a total of 716 200 graduates with tertiary qualifications applied for the SRD grant at the end of January. This represents an increase of approximately 116 200 over the previous reported figure of 600 000 in August 2022. 

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