State must increase child support grant as cash is cheaper to distribute than food
There is strong academic evidence in favour of using cash, not food, as the primary delivery vehicle for emergency aid
21 April 2020 - 18:11
Informal workers and the unemployed are not covered by our Covid-19 response, except for food parcels, which are hard to get. Without any intervention, leading academics estimate the extreme poverty rate will almost triple.
The government should heed the call of civil society and academics to increase the amount of the child support grant. Cash is cheaper to distribute than food, even when you are starting a system from scratch. We aren’t: our grants system reaches 18-million people. Cash might be more fungible and possible to divert...
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