The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) found over 30 000 people had improperly benefited from the R350 grant. Sassa began processing payments of the special Covid-19 R350 SRD grant last week
Sassa has told the Select Committee on Health and Social Services that 31 955 people had benefitted improperly from the R350 SRD grant since it was instituted. This has cost South Africa over R11 million. The people that were benefiting were either being overpaid by Sassa or did not qualify for the grant.
The Auditor General (AG) had initially said that over 60 000 people had benefited wrongly from the grant. They say this could have potentially cost South Africa over R23 million.
Dianne Dunkerley, Sassa’s executive for grants administration, said the AG’s findings enabled Sassa to investigate the claims that people were undeservedly benifiting from the SRD grants and immediately stop payments and prevent the loss of more money. She says Sassa has also put in a number of measures to prevent this from happening in the future.
"There are monthly validations done across all the databases that we have access to. So it doesn’t matter what the previous decision was. In the new month, we will go and validate those against the updated information that we have received to make sure that on a month by month basis, the beneficiaries do in fact qualify for the grant,” said Dunkerley.
Dunkerley says that government departments need to start sharing data as this would improve the rollout of future programs.
