The report titled “Social Protection in a time of Covid-19: Lessons for a basic income grant” was launched on Tuesday.
“The Covid-19 SRD grant was helpful in a context of poverty and hunger. Beneficiaries were able to use the grants for their immediate needs, preventing them from falling into extreme poverty,” the report reads.
Almost 68% of Covid-19 social relief recipients were men. This was due to the high numbers of women , who received the child support grant, and qualified for a caregiver’s allowance instead; In the report, the Black Sash contends that the grant was insufficient to alleviate the multiple hardships that individuals and households encountered daily, worsened by the pandemic.
These, the report says, made accessing the grant extremely challenging for many people in the poorest areas of the country.