Students have demonstrated their dissatisfaction with not receiving their allowances by protesting at some of the campuses.
Reacting to that, Ehlanzeni TVET college’s communications manager, Mxolisi Nzimande said: “The College only receives tuition funds from NSFAS for all qualifying funded students. NSFAS pays allowances directly to students as of 2019 through the NSFAS e-wallet system. It is, therefore, NSFAS that effects payment to qualifying students based on their targets in terms of disbursement of allowances to both the TVET college sector and the Universities.
“NSFAS determines payment dates for allowances and then communicates them to institutions. In its first communique regarding payments late 2019 and early January 2020, NSFAS indicated that the first advance payments will be made on 7 February 2020 and again on the 27 February 2020. There are students who got paid on the 6th, 7th, 24th, and 27th February 2020. “Our statistics show that a total of only 816 students have been paid, to date despite the fact that the College has submitted relevant documentation for all qualifying students and funded students. The College has done everything expected from it and declared 2 957 students who were on the NSFAS funded list to NSFAS on 31 January 2020. At that point 2491 students had not yet appeared on the funded list from NSFAS and we have requested NSFAS to urgently update their funded list so that these students can receive their allowance,” he explained.
Nzimande says NSFAS must assess all applications of new students and make a decision if such students are funded or not. Over 2 400 students applied for NSFAS during the walk-in process that closed on January 31 for all 50 TVET colleges. SEE NSFAS TWEET WITH LINK TO WEBSITE:
To access your funding progress through your MyNSFAS account, you are required to register or re-register a myNSFAS account on https://t.co/4gk75HosNN pic.twitter.com/YsDe3L6OcY
— NSFAS (@myNSFAS) March 5, 2020
“The college is not responsible for the delays in payment of allowances and the detailed reasons why students have not been paid can be provided by NSFAS. However, the College is in constant communication with the NSFAS offices in Cape Town to try and unblock the delays and the college can confirm that NSFAS is working cooperatively with it. Students have to ensure that they activate their ‘My NSFAS Account’ on the NSFAS portal as they will not be paid by NSFAS if their accounts are not updated even if they are funded.”
