Cosatu: Urgent govt intervention needed to resolve NSFAS crisis
Trade union federation Cosatu has called on the government to intervene in the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) payment saga.
Last month, NSFAS introduced a direct payment method which allows them to pay student allowances directly into bank accounts.
The new payment system also allows NSFAS to speed up the defunding of undeserving beneficiaries.
Many students have expressed dissatisfaction with the new payment system, with the anger leading to protests on various university campuses nationwide.
Last week, students from the University of Pretoria and the Tshwane University of Technology marched to the Union Buildings to hand over a memorandum of demands.
The situation quickly turned violent, with frustrated students blocking roads and police firing rubber bullets to disperse them.
Cosatu spokesperson Matthew Parks says this kind of chaos cannot continue.
“NSFAS has long been infamous for delays in payments reaching students and the universities and colleges who depend upon it. Many students have been wrongly defunded by NSFAS and then have had to wait from 6 months to years for their cases to be resolved.
“There is no excuse in a 21st-century economy for this level of chaos to be allowed to continue. The Department of Higher Education and National Treasury need to intervene and put in place a payment system that will ensure students, universities, and colleges receive their payments timeously and without scandalous deductions by private companies profiteering at the expense of the poor.
“If such a system can exist at the South African Revenue Service, then it should not require a genius to replicate it at NSFAS. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority needs to investigate the deductions fleeced from students’ allowances by these companies and ensure that they are refunded.”
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