The Department of Social Development (DSD) has announced an adjustment to the income threshold for the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant. If the adjustment is approved, the new SRD income threshold will R624. This is in line with the food poverty line in South Africa.
This increase to the income threshold also means that more people will qualify for the grant. This is on condition that they still meet all the qualifying criteria.
In April 2022, the income threshold for the SRD grant was moved to R350. This was lower than the previous income threshold of R595 which was in place during previous iterations of the grant. A consequence of this was that less people qualified for the grant with lower income threshold.
Social Development Department's Brenda Sibeko explained that the income threshold was lowered to R350 because they did not have the total budget allocation to pay all the people who previously benefited from the SRD grant.
“By the end of March of this year we were covering 10.9 million people and we realised that now that the allocation we have is for 10.5 million, we are forced in order to stay within the budget to change some of the regulations that we had before,” explained Sibeko.
However, under the R350 income threshold for the SRD grant, only around 5.8 million people were being covered. This played a part in the department's decision to lift the income threshold to R624 which will result in more people receiving the grant.
Sibeko says while more people will benefit from the SRD grant after the changes, it is still not adequate to deal with the full extent of hunger in South Africa. They say government must establish a basket of social protection benefits to ensure that people survive in the long term.
This proposed change to the R350 grant income threshold is now in the public comment process.
This article was updated to include additional information.
