Students living in private accommodation near their universities and colleges may have faced delays in receiving their National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funding for rent. NSFAS is working hard to fix these issues.
NSFAS offers financial aid, including bursaries and student loans, to deserving students enrolled in approved programs at universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges. This funding covers not just tuition and registration fees but also living expenses like food, accommodation, and learning materials.
The accommodation allowance is essential for many students who wouldn't be able to afford living near their place of study without this help. Delays in receiving this allowance could cause hardship, including eviction threats for some students. Landlords may be hesitant to rent to students due to these payment issues.
NSFAS administrator, Freeman Nomvalo, assures students that the challenges regarding private accommodation allowance payments are being addressed and should be resolved by the end of May 2024.
A dedicated email address, [email protected], has been set up to handle all disputes or concerns related to unpaid accommodation allowances. A team has been assembled to address queries received through this email address. NSFAS is also working to increase the team's capacity to deal with these issues more efficiently.
While there haven't been recent reports of student evictions, NSFAS hopes landlords will collaborate with them to ensure students can attend classes without disruption.
We are hoping that the landlords would rather work with us and allow students a smooth attendance of classes
Reasons for Allowance Delays
Several factors have contributed to the delays in rent payments according to Nomvalo. These include data validation issues, missing registration data and inefficiencies in the Nsfas system
Some are raising the issue of the cap but there are others where the data validation issues are at play and there are those where our inefficiencies are also at play so there are various categories
Nomvalo says the team will also work to address the backlog of payments as well as identify weaknesses in the NSFAS system.
Accommodation providers are encouraged to submit their queries to the dedicated email address by 10 May 2024.
With all of the information available, we should be able to resolve them by the end of the month.
