The first day of applications for the Special COVID-19 social Relief of distress grant got off to a slow start due to excessive traffic on the SASSA website this morning. “This is a clear indication of the huge need for food aid among others, from distressed inhabitants of the country, and therefore the President couldn’t have reinstated this grant at a better time.
HOW TO APPLY
This morning, we added two new online channels for application in order to ease the pressure on our website, namely: https://govchat.app/login and Facebook messenger, https://www.facebook.com/govchat.org”: said Busisiwe Memela-Khambula the SASSA CEO.
Initially applications were taken through the website on https://SRD.sassa.gov.za or through WhatsApp on 082 046 8553 only.
Applications opened at 09:00 but in 45 minutes time the utilisation of the server hosting the website was above 95%. “This resulted in the website slowing down dramatically, which necessitated us to use our disaster recovery sites and add more channels for application immediately. Our technicians are on high alert and will monitor the impact of these interventions in order to continuously improve the application experience for our clients”: Memela-Khambula added.
Early next week, another channel called Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) will be added to the existing ones. The construction of this channel is at an advanced stage and it will help people without smart phones to also be able to apply effortlessly. Further announcements will be made in due course.
Anyone still experiencing technical difficulties with WhatsApp or the website is reminded that they still have the whole month of August to apply in order to receive their August payments. Our technicians are working tirelessly to stabilise the system. We appeal to all affected applicants to please exercise patience.