The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is working to resolve delays in payments to private accommodation providers for students.
NSFAS provides comprehensive bursaries and student loans to deserving learners enrolled in approved courses at universities and TVET colleges The funding not only includes money for tuition and registration fees but also includes several allowances for food, accommodation and learning materials.
The accommodation allowance paid by NSFAS is critical for many students who otherwise not be able to afford to live near their place of study while they earn their qualifications.
This could cause hardship for some students who may face eviction as NSFAS funding includes accommodation allowances for students living in approved private housing. Landlords are reportedly withholding rooms due to non-payment.
NSFAS administrator, Freeman Nomvalo says the challenges facing student switch regarding private accommodation allowance payments are set to be resolved by the end of May 2024.
The financial aid scheme set up a dedicated email address to process all disputes or concerns related to unpaid accommodation allowances. The dedicated email address is [email protected]
Nomvalo revealed that a team has been assembled to attend to all queries received via the dedicated email address set up by NSFAS. They are set to increase the capacity of the team to improve its ability to deal with these challenges more efficiently.
We were briefing that team in terms of the work that they need to do we are still going to be getting more capacity to make sure that these matters are attended to as quickly as possible.
Nomvalo says while there have been no instances of students being locked out over their accommodation for the past few days, they are hopeful that the accommodation provided will work with NSFAS before students are evicted.
"We are hoping that the landlords would rather work with us and allow students a smooth attendance of classes," said the Administrator.
He explained that several factors have contributed to the non-payment of rent for students living in pirate accommodation.
Some are raising the issue of the cap but there are others where the data validation issues are at play and there are those where our inefficiencies are also at play so there are various categories.
This includes institutions not submitting registration data, a factor that received the blame for several challenges.
We all know the challenges that NSFAS has been facing and these challenges are the ones that have led to this. There's an interface handshake between ourselves and institutions in terms of the data that is necessary for validation before payments are done. All of those factors are contributing to this.
Nomvalo says the team will also work to address the backlog of payments as well as identify weaknesses in the NSFAS system. Accommodation providers are encouraged to submit their queries to the dedicated email address by 10 May 2024.
"With all of the information available, we should be able to resolve them by the end of the month."
