Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu has launched the Rapid Assessment of the Implementation and Utilisation of the Special Coronavirus Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) Grant Report.

The launch was part of the Department’s observance of the series of markers of this year’s Social Development Month campaign themed ‘Delivering DSD Services During Covid-19 in the Year of Charlotte Maxeke’.

The Report reinforces the Department’s call for meaningful investments in shock responses that cater for South Africans.

Zulu said that the Department has been gathering and analysing data to better understand the outcomes and impact of the Covid-19 SRD on the lives of South Africans, households and the communities they live in.

“Explicit in the findings of this report is how our government practically attended to the perennial challenges of hunger, incomelessness, depravation, impoverishment, and securing a decent and dignified life for all South Africans since the advent of Covid-19,” she said.

The report found that the grant particularly assisted those aged 18 to 59  and calls for improved population targeting.

According Zulu, the report also recommended that qualifying criteria for citizens should be removed through the design of application, verification and payment processes.

“It has been established that many applicants were excluded from benefiting from the Covid-19 SRD grant owing to the applicable means test that unwarrantedly generate false-positive results. These exclusion errors have denied the very people that the programme is targeting the benefit that we designed for them,” she explained.

She urged the continued non-medical interventions against Covid-19 such as social distancing, hand washing, sanitising and vaccinating.