Application made for extension of R350 grant, says Zulu
Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu says the department has applied to Treasury for an extension of the R350 Covid-19 grant during adjusted lockdown level 4.
On Friday, Zulu briefed the media on her department's response to the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Long enough, before the end of the last level, we had already made the request, but we are very conscious of the fact that financially we are not doing very well as government, but we did submit our request for a continuation,” she said.
"We are not only looking at Covid-19 from a point of view of what would happen in the future, but what is happening and the impact on our people. We know for the poorest of the poor in South Africa, the recovery will take long because the impact of Covid-19 is devastating.”
She said they are still waiting to see if it will be possible to extend the grant.
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Meanwhile, the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) said investigations into fraudulent transactions related to the grant are still ongoing.
CEO Totsie Mamela said the 105 inmates who had applied for the grant and received it did not manage to collect it.
She said despite not being able to collect it they still committed a crime.
"We are working with the Fusion Centre which is looking at all the different categories of fraudulent transactions that happened at the start of the pandemic to ensure that due process is continued in terms of making sure that those people are punished, and the money is returned.”
She added that they have also stopped grant payments that are being transacted from outside South Africa and further probing how those people got the grants.
A total of 241 public servants who also received the grant are part of government learnerships, said Memela.
She said the process has begun to retrieve the money.
