14-07-2025
Sassa encourages honesty from grant beneficiaries during income reviews
'We have not experienced a situation where someone has been verified and not been paid. If the person no longer qualifies in terms of the legislation, we will suspend the grant but there hasn't [yet] been any suspension.'
Matlou noted that means testing varies depending on the type of grant. For child support grants, it is the primary caregiver's income that is assessed, not the child's. In contrast, the SRD (Covid-19) grant involves more stringent, automated income checks via bank verification to determine eligibility.
'With SRD, we verify through the banks whether there's consistent money that comes through. But for normal grants, the means test usually applies to the primary caregiver only.'
To reduce panic and long queues at Sassa offices, Matlou said the agency is developing a self-review online platform so grant recipients can review their own information without visiting offices. Hotspot offices with high volumes are being staffed with additional personnel to handle reviews more efficiently.
'We've only sent out the first rounds of notifications in June. We're still within the review time frame. Once we pass that, and if clients haven't come forward, then suspension will occur not necessarily because they don't qualify but because they failed to do the review.'
The agency will publish data on the number of beneficiaries reviewed, the outcomes of those reviews and the number of grants continued or cancelled by the end of July.
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