Cape Town - As desperate students continue to visit the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) building on the Foreshore with queries and appeals, Higher Education, Science and Innovation Minister Blade Nzimande briefed MPs on the fund’s positive outcomes and challenges.
Last week and on Monday morning, queues of students snaked outside the NSFAS building in Christiaan Barnard Street, to enquire about the status of their applications.
However, Nzimande and his department’s director-general Nkosinathi Sishi told MPs on Wedneday that an “unprecedented” projected NSFAS budget of R47 billion covered more than one million students.
This was a “historic breakthrough” given the repressive history of the country, the minister said.
“We have a lot of challenges, but at the same time we’re making a lot of progress,” Nzimande said.
Referring to class disturbances caused by Eskom’s load shedding, he said Higher Education, Science and Innovation had met to develop inclusive plans and approaches, including hybrid learning, as a response. No timelines were given.
Sishi said the NSFAS budget and projections were “a good story to tell”.
Queries sent to NSFAS about the frustrations faced by city students went unanswered.
Sishi told MPs the department has a monitoring tool that they use to look at issues affecting universities, such as the adequacy of university-owned, -leased and -accredited accommodation, and the number of applications for new spaces the universities received, among other issues plaguing institutions during the registration period.
The Cape Argus reported this week that scores of young people braved wet weather for hours on Monday as they tried to register at CPUT.
UCT and UWC have been marred by student protests, which called for the removal of previous years’ fee blocks and for students to be allowed to register and placed in residences.
Sishi said: “Despite some initial concern about late funding decisions, delays in confirming spaces and some protests last week, the system (higher education) is relatively settled.”
Sishi said engagement over the protests at UCT was continuing.
“We insist that NSFAS allowances must be paid timeously. We are very happy that already all 900000 students in the TVET and university sector that are eligible for NSFAS have already been confirmed (for) funding,” Sishi said.
DA MP Karabo Khakhau asked whether – in light of the accommodation crisis and limited lecture space – it would be possible to have a broader scale of digital education at all the institutions, whether this was feasible and what the limitations were.
Nzimande said the department was dealing with building modern infrastructure that was in line with the latest technologies.
soyiso.maliti@inl.co.za