The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) received more than 14 million applications for the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) since applications were reopened in August this year.
Some SRD grant recipients were however not able to access their money via their bank accounts. This is because the grant applicants' bank accounts were inactive for a period of time.
SASSA says they are reconciling bank account statements to confirm receipt of the funds back from the bank, before they can be regenerated for payment.
They say this process will be completed by the end of November 2021 and the paybacks will be made.
This process is vitally important as many grant applicants would not have had any financial assistance for the past months.
A recent study conducted by Clermont Analytics revealed that 93% of SRD grant money was used to purchase food. They found that food was followed by electricity as the most frequently bought products with the SRD grant funds.
Around 9.5 million people have benefited from the SRD grant and currently, 27.8 million South Africans are social grant recipients which is around 46 percent of the country's population. These grants include the disability grant, older persons grant, child support grant, foster care grant and the war veterans grant.
