Part of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme's (NSFAS) mandate is to provide allowances to students for their daily needs such as accommodation, transport, learning materials and more. However, this process has experienced many disruptions recently.
NSFAS recently announced that the NSFAS bank account will no longer be used to pay allowances. Instead, TVET College students would receive their allowances in their personal bank accounts and universities will pay allowances directly to students.
On Monday morning, NSFAS Administrator, Mr. Freeman Nomvalo, held a briefing to provide updates on NSFAS allowance disbursements.
The Adminstrator revealed that a new student allowance mechanism for both universities and TVET Colleges will be fully developed by September 2024. Once it's developed, NSFAS will then start migrating all students from that time onwards.
TVET College NSFAS Allowances
Following months of allowance payment challenges, NSFAS implemented a new payment allowance system for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college students.
This new payment system would see students receive their NSFAS allowances directly in their bank accounts. NSFAS called on all TVET College students to upload their bank account details on the myNSFAS portal to ensure their allowances are paid on time.
"Students must provide information that is accurate so that the system can accept the information they submit ... some students submit parents' bank accounts and this creates problems in terms of verification and we urge all students to open their own bank accounts," said the NSFAS Administrator.
University NSFAS Allowances
In April, NSFAS made an agreement with universities that they would pay NSFAS allowances until the end of July. Nomvalo said, "Our intention is to make sure there are no disturbances in disbursements to students because that has got the potential to disrupt the normal process of learning and teaching”.
The Direct Payment solution was introduced by NSFAS in 2022. This saw NSFAS allowances paid to students using a NSFAS bank account facilitated by fintech providers.
However, this new system only brought challenges along with it which lead to students having to pay exorbitant bank charges and allowances being delayed.
