The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) deals with a massive backlog of NSFAS appeals. The scheme confirmed that 90,000 appeals have been recorded since April this year.
NSFAS provides comprehensive bursaries and student loans to deserving learners enrolled in approved courses at universities and TVET colleges. This includes money for tuition and registration fees as well as several allowances for food, accommodation and learning materials.
Students can lodge appeals if their NSFAS bursary applications are denied or their funding is cut off by the government bursary scheme.
NSFAS recently revealed that there are only 80 to 86 employees to handle all the appeals. That means there is a massive backlog, and some appeals are not getting the attention they deserve.
NSFAS administrator Freeman Nomvalo says despite the backlog, work is being done to resolve these appeals. One of the things NSFAS has done is temporarily re-assign staff to assist with appeal decisions.
What we do from time to time is pull teams from other parts of the institution to assist in the resolution of queries.
Nomvalo said each employee deals with around 100 queries a day. This has enabled the scheme to reduce the backlog of appeals. They added that queries that have not been finalised are normally because students are required to take action.
NSFAS May Establish More Offices
NSFAS recently reported to the Parliamentary Committee on Higher Education on the steps that have been taken to improve the scheme’s operations since it was placed under administration a few months ago.
It was suggested that NSFAS establish local offices in all of South Africa’s nine provinces. It is believed that the decentralisation of its operations will help NSFAS deal more effectively with localised challenges. Currently, the bursary scheme aims to assist approximately a million students from its base in Cape Town.
Nomvalo says engagements have been held with several stakeholders regarding potential collaboration efforts to assist students.
We do believe that NSFAS has to be accessible, it has to be close to where most of the institutions are, one of the anomalies is that we are based in Cape Town whereas most of the institutions are in Gauteng.
Acting Chairperson Prof. Lourens Van Staden said in March that the scheme is planning to open offices around the country.
