As you may remember back in April 2022 the minister of Social Develpments Lindiwe Zulu announced amendments to the qualifying criteria for the R350 unemployment grant which led to millions of individuals who benefited from the grant previously now being disqualified.
In actual statistics, since the new criteria were imposed in April, 11.3 million people applied for the grant but only 5.2 million people qualified. This is compared to the 10.5 million people who benefited from the R350 grants since it was introduced and when the qualification criteria were far less demanding.
Minister Zulu announced that the qualifying criteria for the R370 SRD grant will be eased, which means many more people will be able to benefit from the grant again. The department also confirmed that applicants will still undergo cross-checks against the banking system.
Basically, under the new criteria, it means that you can still qualify for the grant even if you have an income of more than R350 per month however you will not qualify if you have an income of more than R624 per month, which is the same as the previous criteria where over 10 million people used to benefit.
Also, applicants will no longer be required to reapply every 3 months.
The department also said that if your application was unsuccessful in the previous months, you must submit an appeal for each month for which you were declined. Appeals will now be lodged directly with an appeals tribunal and no longer with Sassa.
