University students fuming over new service providers
The students intend to challenge the new NSFAS payments.
Students at universities are fuming over what was supposed to be their source of assistance but which has now turned into their worst nightmare.
This comes after four service providers were employed by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to distribute student allowances for five years. Norraco Corporation, Coinvest Africa, Tenet Technology, and Ezaga Holdings won the tender for the programme.
Nevertheless, the new payment system has also left hundreds of students without money and without anyone to be held responsible for unauthorised withdrawals from their allowances.
University students are furious and have taken to social media to express their frustrations. This new payment method has made things difficult for students as they can`t register or withdraw their money without being charged a ridiculous amount of money for withdrawals and other transactions.
“We are against this new method of payment, and we do not take this lightly because this is an exploitative strategy in place, which is like a new taxation strategy on student allowances,” said UJ SRC chairperson, Terrence Langa.
“The introduction of these profit-driven cash solutions service providers also demonstrates how incapacitated our government is. I mean the country’s economy is already in a precarious situation, the cost of living is costly, and but these elite-packed arrangements of promoting the tenderpreneurs whose sole aim is to exploit the marginalised students, who solely rely on these allowances. I mean, R12, as a payroll fee, and R30 of transaction fees, it is the bread price to a marginalised university student.”
Langa stressed that students are in a state of panic, as they can’t register on these platforms of new cash solutions service providers.
“Their processes of withdrawing are even worse. Students have since received allowances on June 30 – yet they have not received their allowances, and yet they claim these are direct payments. There’s nothing direct about these payments, and we hope we can go back to 2020, 2021, 2022, wherein Fundi used to release allowances without even a deduction of a mere R12,” he added.
The future seems uncertain to most students as they face this problem.
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