Johannesburg - The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is currently engaged with student leaders in a bid to address protest action that continued to affect a number of Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) campuses for a second day.
Yesterday, TUT announced to stakeholders that sporadic student protests had erupted at some of its campuses as a result of the delayed payment of student allowances from the third-party financial service provider eZAGA.
The service provider, which is tasked with disbursing funds directly to millions of students reliant on NSFAS starting on July 1, has however come under fire from various student groups and students alike since the implementation of the new payment system.
University spokesperson Phaphama Tshitsikhawe stressed that despite payments no longer being disbursed by the university division, the institution was working closely with the affected students, their organisations, Universities South Africa (USAF), and NSFAS to find a speedy, viable, and sustainable solution.
"At this midpoint and pivotal juncture in the academic year, the university calls upon all stakeholders to do everything in their power to safeguard the academic project."
The Campus Student Representative Council (CSRC) rejected the use of the eZAGA online digital banking service due to its failure at the starting point to pay student meal allowances due to more than 14 000 students for the past two months, despite the academic programme being in full swing.
CSRC president Keamogetswe Masike said student leaders were of the view that the company, tasked with facilitating billions of rand to poorest students, was too inexperienced to handle the task.
When contacted for comment on the situation, Slumezi Skosana, the NSFAS spokesperson, said that the organisation would be engaging with student leaders on the way forward this afternoon and would provide feedback following that.
Meanwhile, other student groups, including the Socialist Youth Movement, have also come out against the new NSFAS banking system.
The movement said it was against the new system as it alleged that students were being charged R29 for a monthly bundle that only offered them 10 free point-of-sale swipes and three cash withdrawals.
They added that over and above this, the service provider charged R2 per point-of-sale transaction and R12 per R100 for ATM withdrawals.
"The NSFAS banking system has not only imposed extortionate banking fees on vulnerable students but also delisted a number of students from the NSFAS database, effectively excluding them from the higher education system," read the statement.
"The current NSFAS crisis serves as yet another example of how the privatisation of public services has placed the interests of an elite few above those of the poor, has obfuscated channels of accountability, and exacerbated inequality and exclusion in this country."
The Star