UMP students protest over transport allowance
Off- camp students complained of being charged more money for rent yet they still need to pay their transport to and from the Mbombela campus.
Nothing moved in and out of the University of Mpumalanga this morning. Students barricaded the entrance with burning tyres while making demands of being allocated transport allowance by the National Student Financial Aids Scheme (NSFAS).
The protest started on Monday morning. Mpumalanga News learned that complaints of being paid transport money was made by off-campus students residing in private accommodation contracted by the university.
They complained of being charged more money for rent yet they still need to pay their transport to and from the Mbombela campus.
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“Only those living at their homes are provided with a transport allowance. We need NSFAS to allocate an allowance for those residing in private accommodation,” they said.
The protest apparently came as surprise to the university’s management as they had met with the off-campus accommodation service providers and the student representative council on Sunday.
“The service providers said they needed to be addressed by someone from NSFAS and we had agreed to make arrangement for that meeting. Our finance jurisdiction is contacting NSFAS. For now they said they will not be able to bring students to the campus without being paid,” explained the dean of student affairs, Dr Paul Maminza.
“We don’t understand why the students decided to lock the gates because this matter is above our strength as an institution,” he said.
Maminza adds that the locking of the gates also delayed the construction work at the site. “This delays the process of the building of another accommodation block which upon its completion would be able to house 219 students. The block was supposed to be completed by January but due to the last year’s protest it was delayed,” he added.
