People desperate to get their hands on Social Relief of Distress vouchers queued and slept outside the SA Social Security Agency offices.
|||Cape Town - People desperate to get their hands on Social Relief of Distress (SRD) vouchers continued to queue and sleep outside the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) offices in the city centre at the weekend.
About 17 residents from Joe Slovo, Salt River and Bo-Kaap lined the pavement outside the Sassa offices on Sunday, hoping to get their hands on a R1 200 SRD voucher, which Sassa hands out every month on Mondays.
The voucher covers short-term relief for people who have suffered loss during fire disasters and other unwarranted hardship.
The Cape Argus reported last week about hundreds of people who spent Sunday night outside the Sassa offices.
The region’s Sassa senior communications and marketing manager, Shivani Wahab, told the Cape Argus that the province was allocated a R10.5 million budget for SRDs and each office allocated 25 vouchers each financial year.
She explained that a person was not entitled to both a social grant and an SRD, and should an applicant meet all the stipulated criteria for a SRD, the voucher could be issued immediately.
Sonusindiswa Hlaba, 28, a mother of three from Joe Slovo, on Sunday settled for her third night away from home. Hlaba and another Joe Slovo resident, Ntombovuyo Dabasi, 44, spent Friday and Saturday night in the city’s police station. Hlaba said a security guard had told them that it wasn’t safe to sleep on the streets. “Today we will sleep here because there [are] more people,” she said.
Hlaba depends on occasional “peace jobs” for which she gets about R500 a month. She left her children, aged between two and eight, with her unemployed boyfriend at home.
“I can’t travel back and forth every morning, we don’t have that kind of money. Every cent goes towards food for my children,” said Hlaba. She said this was her third attempt to get the SRD voucher.
“Each time I pray not to go home empty-handed. This money will help buy Christmas groceries and school uniforms for my children,” she said.
Two blankets and half a loaf of bread is all Hlaba had to get her through the night.
About eight residents questioned by the Cape Argus said they heard about the SRD vouchers from friends within their communities.
Spokeswoman for Social Development MEC Albert Fritz, Melany Kühn, said the MEC had written a “strong worded” letter to Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini “requesting them to communicate properly with the public”.
“There is no campaign to let the public know what the procedure or requirements are. It’s not necessary for people to queue overnight like this,” said Kühn.
Wahab said Sassa officials would be sent out overnight to “address and ascertain” what the people were queuing for: “Lots of people who are receiving social grants are under the impression that we have more to offer.”
She added that as part of a contingency plan the St Georges Cathedral had been hired to accommodate some of the people from tomorrow.
nontando.mposo@inl.co.za
Cape Argus