Court rules for changes to make SRD grant applications easier

The Pretoria high court passed a judgment on Thursday that might make it easier for more people to get the social relief of distress (SRD) grant. 

One of the orders was that a regulation relating to the SRD grant was unconstitutional to the extent that it provided for SRD grant applications to be lodged on an electronic platform only. The court said to remedy that regulation, the words “or at the offices of the agency” shall be read in after the words “on the electronic platform”.

The court also declared another regulation to be invalid to the extent that it made payments to beneficiaries of the SRD grant subject to available funds and permitted the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) to withhold payment of the SRD grant to SRD grant beneficiaries if available funds were depleted. 

The court also declared that Sassa's failure to pay successful applicants of the SRD grant, timeously or at all, was unconstitutional and unlawful. 

The court directed that Sassa investigate the cause of widespread delays in payments to successful SRD grant applicants and devise and implement a plan to address those delays. The court directed Sassa to deliver the plan to address the delays to the court within four months of the order. 

The Institute for Economic Justice and #Paythegrants lodged a court application challenging the lawfulness and constitutionality of the steps the government has taken or failed to take, to implement its own commitment to providing the SRD grant to working-age adults who need it.

They said certain aspects of the SRD grant regulations and the procedures for applying for it had the effect of denying social assistance to people legally entitled to receive it. 

The organisations said though the SRD grant was means-tested like all other grants, the people who were entitled to receive it were treated differently as they had to apply strictly online to access it. They said the online-only application process was restrictive and imposed a barrier for many would-be applicants who lacked access to digital technology or lacked digital literacy and who experienced poor or limited internet connectivity.

Despite admitting that the number of people who would be eligible to receive the SRD grant might be as high as 18.3-million, the National Treasury has reduced the budget for the SRD grant from R36bn to R33.6bn for the 2024/25 financial year, which is sufficient to cover only 8-million beneficiaries. The organisations said this was the result of the use of administrative and procedural obstacles which served the purpose of excluding people who were in need of social assistance — and who would ordinarily be eligible — from receiving the grant.

The minister of social development and Sassa and the National Treasury said the SRD grant was a temporary measure to relieve people who were of insufficient means to support themselves and their dependents. 

They said the online process was quicker, simple and could be accessed by anyone using a smartphone which they could even borrow from friends or relatives or from their chief if living in rural areas. 

They said delays in the payment of SRD grants were caused by glitches that were experienced with the system in the beginning but had since been resolved. 

In his judgment, judge Mpostoli Twala agreed with the minister and Sassa that where public money was to be paid to members of the public, procedural safeguards were necessary to ensure that only those who were entitled to the benefits received them. 

“However, the procedural safeguards must be reasonable and fair,” he said.

He said the safeguards must provide social relief of distress to people who were of insufficient means and not with ulterior purpose or to deliberately exclude people who were entitled to receive the grant benefit. 

“It cannot be right to promulgate regulations with safeguards that are intended to reduce the number of people who are eligible for the SRD grant or to reduce and or limit spending on the SRD grant due to budgetary constraints.” 

Twala said there was no reasonable justification to subject the SRD grant's potential beneficiaries, who were mainly poor and vulnerable members of society, to a solely online application process. There was no reason the SRD grant beneficiaries should not be provided with an alternative method of applying for the grant like the other grants’ beneficiaries.

The ulterior purpose of the online application had the result of reducing the uptake of SRD grant beneficiaries, he said.

The organisations had also sought an order declaring that the constitution required the government to devise and implement a plan to redress the retrogression in the value of the SRD grant and income threshold, and progressively increase the value of the grant. 

“I agree with both the applicants and the respondents that the amount of R350 in May 2020 does not have the same value in 2024 — it has in fact decreased in value.” 

The increase of the value by R20 to R370 did not go far enough to meet the requirements of progressive realisation for it still put the value of SRD grant far below the national food poverty line, he said. 

“I am mindful of the principle of judicial deference. Since the issue to increase the value of the SRD grant falls within the domain of the executive, it is not for this court to prescribe to the executive what to do.”

 TimesLIVE