Cosatu, SACP call on the government to ensure NSFAS is adequately funded

The ANC’s alliance partners, Cosatu and the SACP, on Tuesday called on the government to go above and beyond its commitment to ensure that deserving students at institutions of higher learning get financial assistance for this year.

The SACP and Cosatu welcomed efforts by the government to reprioritise funds to support the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).

“This will contribute to addressing the problem of funding experienced by students eligible for NSFAS coverage during this academic year,” the organisations said in a joint statement.

“However, the SACP and Cosatu wish to stress the importance for the government to go beyond that to ensure the NSFAS is adequately funded going forward and no deserving student is excluded.”

ALSO READ: Student debt for lower middle-class is the issue, says Nzimande

The alliance partners held a virtual bilateral session on Monday led by SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande and Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi.

Nzimande, who is also the Ninister of Higher Education and Training, announced last week that NSFAS would continue funding all existing recipients who have met requirements for this academic year. This scheme is experiencing a financial shortfall and has budgeted more than R35 billion for 2021.

In the past week students have been protesting at various universities against financial exclusion and calling for the scrapping of historical debt.

SACP and Cosatu said their meeting reaffirmed education as a right as elaborated in the Freedom Charter and the Constitution of the country.

They said the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic – including retrenchments, wage cuts and increased unemployment and poverty – added to the increased number of students eligible for NSFAS funding.

The ANC-led alliance’s shared resolutions attach great importance to the goal of free education for the poor and working class who cannot afford student fees, they said.

“At the centre of the funding problem affecting colleges and universities is the endemic capitalist crisis and neoliberal policy of austerity, inclusive of the paradigm of budget cuts over the years dating to previous administrations.

ALSO READ: ‘No money for first-year tertiary students, yet’ – Blade Nzimande

“The budget presented last month [February] to Parliament by the national Treasury continues the cuts to funding support affecting higher education and training institutions throughout the current medium-term expenditure framework up to its outer year, 202-24. This path of neoliberal austerity, often referred to as ‘fiscal consolidation’, amounts to defunding education and other key economic and broader social development priorities,” the statement reads.

Cosatu and the SACP also called on the government to roll back education defunding and expand the technical, vocational and higher education and training sector.

“This will contribute to the success that South Africa needs, among others to eliminate the phenomenon of young people who are not in employment, education and training.”

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