Question NW3229 to the Minister of Social Development

Reply:

(a)(i) The table below provides an indication of the number of clients who have applied for the provision and the number of clients who are on a pending status, per month from April to August 2022.

Period	Total Applications	Pending Status
April	8 148 777	-
May	10 602 246	-
June	11 369 799	-
July	11 823 675	455 836
August	12 179 270	97 766

All clients for the months of July and August who are still on a pending status are new clients who applied late in the respective month. The processing of their applications takes a bit longer as it includes additional first-time validations, such as the verification with Home Affairs for identification purposes etc.

(a)(ii) There are various reasons why clients are declined when applying for the grant, however, all of these reasons can be attributed to indicators that the clients may have a source of income.

These include being employed within government (checks against the Persal, Persol and GEPF databases), support received through NSFAS, accommodation within a government facility (such as a prison) and other indicators of employment such as employer’s contributions to UIF on behalf of the employee and or payment of taxes to SARS. In addition, the bank accounts of applicants are also checked to confirm whether or not there were funds above the threshold flowing into the account during the month.

The table below indicates the total amount of people who were declined on a monthly basis since April to August 2022:

Period	Total Declined
April	3 303 085
May	4 793 365
June	4 390 526
July	5 645 976
August	4 648 389

The table below shows the number of declines that relate specifically to the bank account checks that indicates whether or not the applicant has had a flow of funds above the threshold into their bank account relative to the month of assessment.

Period	Total Declined	Declined due to bank account checks
April	3 303 085	2 700 752
May	4 793 365	4 030 211
June	4 390 526	3 496 046
July	5 645 976	4 902 655
August	4 648 389	4 358 023

(b) The cash send option is still used and is an active payment method for client payment.

The same process, as with bank account verification (where bank account details are verified and linked directly to the applicant) is also followed for cellphone numbers.

Thus, cellphone numbers provided by clients for the payment of the provision are also subjected to identity and cell number verification processes.

This entails that SASSA needs to ensure that the client (identity number) and the cellphone number can be directly linked to each other. This will typically also be true when a client followed a RICA process for his/her cellphone.

This process has been concluded and all cash send payments where SASSA was able to directly link the cellphone number to the client was concluded.

The table below indicates the figures of cash payments made for the month April 22 to July 22.

Period	Clients who requested Cash Send	Successfully Verified (Linked client to Cell Number)	Client could not be linked to Cellphone Number	Clients Paid	% Paid
April	240,507	70,316	170,191	70,316	100%
May	380,548	101,967	278,581	101,967	100%
June	385,062	104,109	280,953	104,109	100%
July	401,405	100,165	301,182	100,165	100%

Where clients applied for cash send and whose cell phone number failed verification, they will have to provide SASSA with a bank account where SASSA is able to pay their money into as these clients typically have not followed the RICA process and it would be a risk to Government to pay these clients without definitive linkage between the client, their ID number and cellphone number.