As anxious students await funding decisions from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), students are urged to be wary of fake news circulating and scammers on the rise.
This year, NSFAS rejected over 300 000 funding applications and students who had been rejected were encouraged to lodge an appeal within 30 days so that the bursary scheme could finalise a decision regarding their funding.
Applications were rejected due to a number of reasons, including the candidate not being eligible for funding, not meeting the necessary academic requirements, earning an annual household income of more than R350 000 and not uploading the correct supporting documents.
Although NSFAS stated that they would release funding decisions by 6 February 2023, students have been left in limbo as the organisation works through the backlog, resulting in many students losing their places at these institutions.
As students continue to wait, fake news has been circulating on social media. A Facebook page called "NSFAS ASSISTANT & ENQUIRIES" has been interacting with students pretending to be an official NSFAS Facebook page created to assist students with how to withdraw money from their accounts. The page would then ask students to provide their personal NSFAS bank card login details in an attempt to scam them.
NSFAS warns that this page is not in any way associated with the bursary scheme and at no point should students share their banking information or MyNSFAS portal login details with anyone.
Furthermore, a man in the Cape Town area has allegedly been charging NSFAS applicants between R4 000 and R5 000 to help them with completing and submitting their NSFAS applications.
In a statement released by NSFAS, they remind students:
- NSFAS will never request that applicants pay a fee to submit an application or receive information pertaining to their application.
- Applicants should never share information with members of the public who claim to offer such services.
- Applicants should not make payments to individuals claiming to assist them with their applications.
Neither NSFAS nor their payment partners will ever request that students provide their login details or make transactions in exchange for assistance with their applications.
These requests should be treated with extreme caution and immediately reported to the relevant authorities.
These criminal acts have been reported to SAPS and if you would like to report anything relating to this matter or any other matter of this nature, NSFAS urges you to please contact the Grassy Park Detectives Fraud Division on (021) 700 3946.
