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The government’s apparent apparent alteration over the increase in the child support subsidy per child, just increasing it per caregiver for five months as part of its Covid-19 aid package, has caused outrage, and experts predict a much lower level of poverty reduction from what had initially been modeled
As part of his R500 billion aid package, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the children’s grant would be increased by R300 in May and by R500 from June to October.
The rest of the grants will be completed with R250 per month for six months, while a special Covid-19 grant from R350 will also be extended for six months for unemployed people who do not receive any other grant.
This was in line with the model that the Presidency had commissioned and received, indicating that completing the children’s allowance with R500 was the fastest and most efficient way of reaching millions of households with informal workers who could lose most of their income during closing.
Little clarity
But since then it has emerged, the R300 grant will only be recharged per child for May, while from June to October the R500 will only be per caregiver, not per child.
This means that households with more than one child will not receive a child grant increase and will only receive a caregiver increase from June to October. The grant is currently distributed per child, not per caregiver.
This was confirmed by Finance Minister Tito Mboweni at a press conference for the National Treasury on Friday afternoon.
At the briefing, Treasury Deputy Director General for Public Finance Dr. Mampho Modise said: “In May, the child support grant per beneficiary, which is the child, will increase by R300 and then onwards we will be allocating money for the recipient, who is the mother, in June, July, August, September and October, the recipient will receive the R500, but in May the recipient, the child, will receive R300. ”
A Sassa spokesman did not respond to requests for comment, while Lindiwe Zulu Social Development spokesperson Lumka Oliphant said the minister would clarify the situation at his next briefing. It is unclear when that will be.
Sassa received several requests for clarity on social media, and explained the situation in a tweet on Thursday in this way:
The result was that the impact of poverty alleviation by completing the children’s subsidy would be substantially reduced, activists and academics said.
He said Ramaphosa’s announcement was misleading, because he had made no distinction between R300 and R500 grants, adding that he could only speculate on why the government had taken this route, but it was possible that it was a cost-cutting measure.
But, Bassier added, the government would only save about R13 billion.
“That may seem like a lot of money, but R13 billion in a package at R500 billion is not that much. But it is a massive amount for households.”
Bassier said the difference took R80 a month from the poorest households in the country on average, “the difference between surviving or not.”
Modeling
The country currently distributes 18 million social subsidies per month, including 12.5 million subsidies for children.
The South African Research and Development Unit at the University of Cape Town (UCT) provided models on the possibilities of increasing social grants to the Presidency towards the end of March.
On April 1, in an article published in The Conversation, the unit’s investigators wrote their research and showed that without urgent intervention, the extreme poverty rate among vulnerable households would likely triple as a result of the shutdown.
They said this was because, until then, the interventions implemented to mitigate the economic impact of the blockade were for people employed through the Unemployment Insurance Fund (FIU). But those without FIUs, mainly informal workers, would have no protection.
According to the unit, about 45% of South African workers were not eligible to claim from the fund.
They calculated that the total cost to complete the grant per child would cost around R6.2 billion per month. The research also showed that 80% of people, working as informal workers, belonged to the poorest half of the population.
Throughout April, a serious lobbying effort was made to pressure the government to adopt the R500 per month for recharging children.
On April 4, the UCT Children’s Institute wrote to Ramaphosa requesting that the children’s grant be replenished at R500 per month per child for six months, according to the unit model.
He noted that other forms of social support, such as the school nutrition scheme that feeds 10 million children, were no longer available.
“This measure [the grant increase] “It is essential to mitigate the impact on children and families during the blockade, as well as the current and future economic shocks created by Covid-19,” the letter reads.
The campaign also grew on social media.
Ramaphosa’s announcement on Tuesday was widely welcomed, as it appeared that the Presidency had adopted this call, when it had only partially done so.
South African Domestic and Allied Workers Union Secretary General Myrtle Witbooi said the impact on households was devastating.
For a grandmother, for example, caring for three children, not receiving equal support for all children was devastating, she added.
And with the possibility that domestic workers can only join the workforce in a level 2 closure scenario, according to the government’s risk assessment strategy, many thousands of women will join the ranks of informal workers on the brink of poverty.
“Yesterday, 27 domestic workers called me to tell me that their employers said they don’t know if they can wait that long for them to return to work.”
“The grant increase is increasing a little, but it is not fully compensating for what happens in a home. It does not protect children from starvation,” said Witbooi.
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