Africanews (26.05.2020) Sunday’s announcement by His Excellency President Matamela Ramaphosa in response to the Corona virus epidemic brings much needed hope to the country. It also enables SASSA to accelerate the pace of paying out the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress grant. In terms of the move to level 3 of the lockdown, government services will commence full reopening from 01 June 2020. At the moment SASSA is operating with a third of its staff during level 4 and a move to level 3 will increase human resource capacity drastically so that payments are made quicker than it is the case currently.
Much progress has been made in preparing for the payment of large numbers of the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress grants. SASSA started using WhatsApp for applications but had to move to other platforms like the srd.sassa.gov.za website and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD). This was after the WhatsApp system was flooded with unprecedented numbers of applications per hour, which it struggled to cope with. The situation was also further challenged by the fact that applicants tried to upload supporting documents through the various platforms, despite this not being necessary. All these application channels have been stabilised and the application process is now significantly smoother.