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- Many South Africans have complained of fraud related to the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant.
- Fraudsters are taking over the cellphone numbers of beneficiaries, preventing them from accessing the grant.
- The SA Social Security Agency is struggling to address these cases due to capacity constraints and a high volume of cases.
Bonginkosi Nxumalo, an unemployed teacher from Daveyton in Benoni, was receiving the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant each month since it was introduced during the Covid lockdown in 2020.
But in January 2023 he got an SMS from the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) alerting him that his cellphone number had been changed. He did not receive another grant payment again after this.
He has tried several times to report the fraud to Sassa via email. Each time, he is told that his case has been escalated. A year later, Nxumalo still hasn't been helped. He is one of many people who complained to GroundUp in recent weeks about being defrauded and blocked from receiving the grant.
Nxumalo has been surviving on the money he makes from piece jobs and on donations from relatives.
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Elizabeth Raiters, who heads up the social grant help desk at PayTheGrants – a campaign focused on creating universal income security and which helps people find correct information on the SRD grant – says she has received hundreds of similar complaints from people across the country.
Raiters says Sassa's response to reports of unauthorised cellphone number changes has been to prohibit recipients from changing their numbers online. Recipients have to phone Sassa's help desk. They are then sent a one-time PIN to the cell number currently registered on the Sassa system to authorise the change. But for beneficiaries such as Nxumalo who have had their cellphone numbers taken over by possible fraudsters, this process is futile.
Raiters says, in addition to the unauthorised cellphone number changes, PayTheGrants has received complaints from several new applicants for the R350 grant who turned 18 in 2023 and discovered that their ID numbers were already being used to receive the grant, preventing them from accessing the grant.
Sassa spokesperson Paseka Letsatsi told GroundUp that the agency's fraud unit was battling with capacity constraints and a high volume of cases regarding the R350 SRD grant.
The number of SRD grant beneficiaries varies between 7.5 million and 8.5 million, as recipients are subjected to monthly means tests.
Letsatsi said the grant had been the "fastest growing grant in the history of social assistance in the country", placing a massive burden on Sassa to administer it and prevent fraud.
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Sassa is developing facial recognition software to strengthen the identity verification process for the grant, Letsatsi said. The software is expected to be implemented in the 2024/25 financial year.
Letsatsi had not responded to questions about Nxumalo's fraud case by the time of publication, but said Sassa's fraud department was prioritising cases of fraud committed by government employees.
