Student representative bodies are calling for the termination of contracts of two companies contracted by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to disburse allowances.
This after accusing them of ineptitude and lacking the capacity to do the job.
The South African Students Congress (Sasco) and the South Africa Technical, Vocational Education and Training Student Association (Satvetsa), which represents students from all 50 registered TVET colleges, have called on NSFAS to remove Norraco Transact as a direct payment firm to disburse allowances, saying it is not well equipped to provide the service.
Satvetsa has also called for Tenet Technology to be removed, saying it has demonstrated that it is incapable of doing the job.
Satvetsa even went as far as saying that they flagged the problems with the direct payment system, piloted at TVET colleges last year and rolled out to universities this year, but their cries fell on deaf ears.
“It is only now when university students are affected by the challenges that we have been facing since last year that the issue is given attention,” charged Satvetsa president Genuis Shabalala.
Shabalala lambasted the department of higher education and NSFAS for using TVET colleges students as guinea pigs for pilot programmes and then
ignoring complaints.
“TVET college students are not taken seriously by the department of higher education, science and innovation and NSFAS,” he said.
NSFAS this year implemented a direct payment system for student allowances across all higher education institutions administered by four service providers eZaga, Norraco Transact, Tenet Technologies and Coinvest.
The financial aid scheme said the main aim of taking over direct payment was to ensure its accountability on student allowances and to establish a better coordinated system of the transfer of funds to students.
“This was after a series of erroneous payments and/or delayed payments to students and incidents of fraudulent transactions to which NSFAS would not assume accountability,” said NSFAS spokesperson Slumezi Skosana this week.
But for student bodies the change has come with a lot of heartache. “Noracco and Tenet Tech are the worst with their problematic onboarding system,” said Shabalala.
“There are system glitches even before students are able to complete the forms.
“The payment providers should be deploying people to college campuses to help students. Charges are also complicated.
“Sometimes money disappears on the system,” he said.
Shabalala said the service providers charged exorbitant administration fees of up to R150. He said NSFAS had said admin fees would be about R12.
Shabalala added the funding scheme also dragged its feet in uploading the registration information so that the direct payment providers could complete their processes.
“It is not clear whether it is issues of capacity on NSFAS’ side or inefficiency, but the system is plagued by problems.”
Sasco president Vezinhlanhla Simelane also lambasted some universities for their role in frustrating the process of payment of allowances.
“It is common knowledge that some universities deliberately do not send the lists of registered students to NSFAS and when students try to register for the card, their information is not on the database,” he said.
Simelane said universities benefited from the process of disbursing allowances and being responsible in appointing their preferred service providers. “There’s an element of sabotage as well by some universities by not providing the lists of registered students on time to frustrates the process.
“The department must deal with these issues because it is the students that are eventually negatively affected,” he said.
Simelane and Shabala’s sentiments were also echoed by the South African Union of Students (Saus), which represents student representative bodies of all 26 public universities. Asive Dlanjwa, Saus national spokesperson, said due to the non-payment of allowances, some of the students were being deprived of their basic human rights.
NSFAS has been meeting with university student bodies to deal with issues of funding, including the payment of allowances and the defunding of
students who do not qualify for the scheme’s help.
In a statement issued this week, NSFAS said it took full accountability for the actions of its current partners.
“NSFAS expects the new system to be not only convenient to students but also to provide for allowances in a manner that is both dependable and predictable to students,” said Skosana.
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