Nsfas funding delays affecting student registrations, says Sasco

The South African Students Congress (Sasco) is to decide this week on the way forward on the plight of tertiary students still unregistered and not attending classes because the National Students Financial Aid Scheme has not notified them about the outcome of their funding applications.

But Nsfas spokesperson, Kagisho Mamabolo, blamed the delays on the postponement of the final year examinations to January due to last year’s #FeesMustFall protests.

He said the exams had impacted on the returning students as the funding could only be confirmed when the final year results were released by institutions.

Some students submitted incomplete or unsigned forms and some supporting documents were missing and they had to attend to that.

Sasco secretary-general Thembani Makata said the student body’s national executive committee would discuss the crisis at Nsfas and the plight of the unanswered students at meeting in Johannesburg on Thursday.

“We will deliberate exactly on frustrations caused by the Nsfas slow system. It is clear that Nsfas did not properly plan to carry out this important task,” Makata said.

She said the Nsfas call centre was inundated with desperate students who wanted to heard the outcomes of their applications, but the system was allegedly slow to attend to their queries.

“We know that some universities are taking advantage of the Nsfas crisis and not admitting students who have no money. We will do everything in our power to fight this problem,” Makata said.

Nsfas’s Mamabolo said by February 8, Nsfas had already processed applications and responded to more than 175 348 which included 67 875 first-time students and 107 474 returning students.

They expected these numbers of funded students to increase as more were processed.

He said they had agreed with universities that they could immediately accept and register Nsfas returning students if they received Nsfas financial aid in 2016 and satisfied the university admission requirements.

Mamabolo said they denied Sasco’s allegation that the Nsfas system was slow.

“Our contact centre agents take as many incoming calls as they possibly can. We have an obligation to attend to each caller and assist them to their satisfaction. So if callers want to hold the line until we have resolved their queries, others may be unable to get through at that particular minute, but it does not necessarily mean the whole contact centre operation is slow,” Mamabolo said.

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