Nsfas resolved historical debt
HOUGHTON – Historic debt of all students who qualify for Nsfas has been resolved
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) chairperson Sizwe Nxasana assured that all Nsfas students who were offered a place to study at any public university should not be denied access based on financial need.
He was briefing the media on the 2016 budget allocations and administration processes for additional funding following government resolution on historic debt and upfront registration fee for Nsfas students.
The press briefing was held at Houghton Boardroom in Houghton on 21 January.
“We have already paid the universities and Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges a total of R1.8 billion for the registration fees in advance for all Nsfas qualifying students. We expect that our universities will effectively implement this decision,” he explained.
He continued that the historic debt of all students who qualify for the scheme was resolved. An amount of R2, 543 billion would assist 71 753 identified students with loans who qualified for the scheme, but were partially or not funded at all over the past three years.
These students would either have been unfunded or underfunded although they qualified for the scheme but only if they were studying between 2013 and 2015.
Nsfas general manager for loans and bursaries, Jomo Jacobs explained that the scheme beneficiaries should be made aware of the importance of repaying their loans. “If you are earning more than R30 000 per annum, you should start repaying,” he said.
He further explained that repaying the loan was a contribution to assist the scheme to help other students and those who were not paying would be blacklisted. “We give students 12 months after they have completed their studies before we charge them interests. If you look at our last statement we gave more bursaries than loans,” concluded Jacobs.
The scheme budget increased from R9,5 billion in 2015 to R10 billion in the 2016/17 financial year; R700 million from the budgeted amount has been allocated for full bursaries in scarce and critical skills for this year.
An additional funding of R4,582 billion was allocated to the scheme by President Jacob Zuma as announced on 8 January.
The new funding model for poor and the missing middle students was planned for piloting in the 2017 academic year with full implementation expected in the 2018 academic year.
“This new model seeks to provide loans and bursaries for those students who do not qualify based on the household financial income but cannot afford to pay the university fees,” concluded Nxasana
Details: National Student Financial Aid Scheme, 021 763 3200.
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