Advocacy group #PayTheGrants picketed outside the National Treasury headquarters in Tshwane in Tuesday morning to demand that the government must move away from the R370 monthly grant paid to unemployed people and instead adopt a basic income grant system the amount of which would sustain the livelihoods of the unemployed people in South Africa.
But in the meantime, #PayTheGrants is also calling for SASSA to stop disqualifying unemployed people from receiving their grants just because they happen to be having an amount of R650 in their bank accounts or were detected as having withdrawn the selfsame amount of money via money market.
Co-ordinator of Assembly of the Unemployed People in Gauteng Princess Majola told Tshwane Talks that she came to support the picket action organised by #PayTheGrants as her organisation is also of the opinion that the R370 SRD grant is too little and must be replaced by a genuine basic income grant.
“R370 SRD grant is an insult to the poor unemployed masses of this country,” said Majola.
She also added that the R650 threshold which is used to disqualify SRD grant recipients is also an insult because reality suggests that one can’t do much with R650, yet the government assumes one is rich when one scrapes some R650 somewhere.
“We are saying to Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwane, release the grant money because an amount of R15 billion has been returned to the Treasury under the false pretext that grant beneficiaries have not collected it, yet the truth is that is the money which SASSA has withheld from beneficiaries,” fumed Majola.
She acknowledged reports that the government is discussing the implementation of a real basic income grant but pointed out that by denying SRD recipients their money now, not many of them will be alive at the time a basic income grant is introduced because they shall have been killed by hunger.
Majola opined that everyone from the ages of 18 years to 59 must receive the SRD grant.
She said they would not be handing any memorandum to the Treasury because they have been to the Treasury several times now and that the Treasury has never bothered to respond to their demands.
“The last time we were here two years ago, our memorandum was received by a mere security guard who never delivered it to the relevant authorities at the Treasury and that means we are being taken for fools,” fumed Majola.
#PayTheGrants Spokesperson General Moyo blamed the exclusion of millions of beneficiaries from the SRD grant on austerity measures and budget cuts that have been implemented by Minister Godongwane.
“We know that Godongwane is pushing a neo liberal agenda by using clandestine means to force SASSA to remove as many people as it can from the SRD grant system,” said Moyo.
“What Godongwane is doing is constitutionally unfair as many people will starve as a result of no longer earning the SRD grant,” he said.
Moyo also pointed out that the government must introduce what he called the basic income guarantee to sustain the lives of the unemployed people in the country.