NSFAS strike hits students hard
Thousands of students are waiting for their student grants to be allocated, but Nehawu insists the strike will go on until their demands are met.
Nehawu members protest outside the Unisa main campus, demanding increased wages. Picture: Jacques Nelles
For thousands of tertiary students around the country, the waiting for the allocation of student grants continues as workers at the National Students Financial Assistance Scheme (NSFAS) have gone on strike.
The strike started on Tuesday when wage negotiations between NSFAS and the National Education‚ Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) reached a deadlock.
Nehawu spokesperson Khaya Xaba said: “Workers will not return to work until the management concedes to our demands.”
Among Nehawu’s demands are higher wages and “the absorption of contract workers to be permanent”.
The union believes these demands can be met as the institution “always returns money which it fails to utilise on staff costs”.
Chief executive officer of NSFAS Steve Zwane said progress had been made in some areas of the negotiations with the union and that the organisation would commit to meeting the organisation today to discuss the outstanding issues.
“We assure that we are working with Nehawu and the NSFAS board to address the issues speedily, to ensure that colleagues are back at work, serving the South African public in the implementation of the new fee-free education policy,” he said.
Xaba said Nehawu members at NSFAS were “sick and tired of being taken for granted” by the university management.
“The only thing that will make workers return back to work is for NSFAS to convene a special board meeting that must approve the implementation of our demands, as we can’t wait for the normal one taking place on March 16, 2018,” said Xaba.
He urged members at NSFAS currently deployed to assist with applications in technical vocational education and training colleges and universities “not to provide any assistance … but rather treat the deployment to those institutions as a holiday, fully paid for by the employer, until the NSFAS management meets all of our demands”.
NSFAS confirmed “normal operations are affected, and that management have, as far possible, made some arrangements to attend to critical operational matters during this time”.
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