The South African Students Congress (SASCO) has launched a scathing attack on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) Board, accusing them of hypocrisy in recent funding decisions.
In 2023, NSFAS funded more than one million students enrolled in approved courses at universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges in South Africa. However, several challenges meant that the comprehensive funding provided by NSFAS may not have been as effective as it could be in assisting the poor and working-class students.
At the time, the Board attributed these issues to necessary "consequence management" following irregularities in the implementation of a direct allowance payment system.
This NSFAS direct payment system, introduced in 2022, involved four companies facilitating the payment of student allowances. An investigation later revealed potential conflicts of interest in their appointment, leading to the dismissal of NSFAS CEO Andile Nongogo and the termination of contracts with the service providers - a process still ongoing as NSFAS anticipates legal challenges from the companies.
In 2024, NSFAS informed students that they would be required to register with these same four companies as the companies would continue in their capacity to distribute allowances.
This decision has drawn strong criticism from SASCO accusing the Board of hypocrisy for reinstating allegedly irregular service providers, ignoring the union’s long-standing call for eliminating the "middleman" approach and asserting that the current system exploits students in several ways.
These companies, in the main, have no capacity nor working capital to handle billions of Rands and sadly rely on NSFAS payouts for their operational expenditure.
This exploitation is characterised by delays in students receiving an allowance, inefficient distribution systems, unreliable and unprofessional service as well as unnecessary charges.
The union are calling for the implementation of recommendations from the Werksmans report, including terminating contracts with the aforementioned companies. They further point to NSFAS’ decision to allow institutions to pay allowance at the beginning of the 2024 academic year as the incapacitation of these companies.
Our stance has been proven by the initial decision to allow universities to continue to disburse allowances for the first 3 months, which is indicative of incapacitated companies and the swift implementation of the Werksmans report and recommendations to terminate these contracts.
SASCO further criticises the lack of progress on the student accommodation pilot project. In 2022, NSFAS launched an accommodation portal which allows accommodation providers to register their properties for consideration to house NSFAS-funded students.
The portal was introduced to ensure students live in accommodation facilities that are conducive to learning.
The student union argues that NSFAS's indecisiveness has resulted in many students facing precarious living situations. They are calling for immediate and practical steps to address the accommodation crisis.
NSFAS has been stagnant in its decisive implementation of increasing bed spaces in institutions of higher learning in general and TVET Colleges in particular.
SASCO has warned that vigorous sectoral action will be taken if their demands are not met.
"We are hard at work in mobilising our constituency to polish their activism boots towards a vigorous sectoral statement and a call for immediate and practical decisions taken which will satisfy primarily students, private landlords, Universities and TVET Colleges."
