Pretoria - It was a bleak long weekend for students of Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University after they were frustrated by delayed funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
The Ga-Rankuwa students have not been paid their allowances by the scheme since January, and this saw them taking to the streets in protest.
The scheme last week promised that it would have made the payments to students by Thursday, but it was not yet clear to the Pretoria News if the payments were processed owing to the holidays.
Three Student Representative Council (SRC) members and one student were suspended due to the protests. It is understood that they included the president and secretary-general of the SRC, together with the chairperson of Oral Health.
The protests started last week, at which point the university management brought in private security on campus to curb the protesting students.
The students have accused the institution of not prioritising the allocation of the funds.
Speaking on national television, SRC president Thato Masekoa said students were hungry and frustrated due to the non-payment of funds for more than four months.
“If you spend three months without food, that means that you are created to fail. It means that these students are set up to fail, they are most likely going to be excluded from the funding, and that on its own creates a problem,” Masekoa said.
Masekoa further accused the private security that the university had hired of assaulting some protesting students.
Another student, Aphile Madela, said she did not have books or food.
“We don’t have the book allowance. We don’t have food. We are expected to be patient and continue with life and write tests, but they are not giving us our money.
“They have not paid our school fees since 2021. We are owing over R300 000 while we are in our final year. We literally need serious intervention now, otherwise we will protest every day.”
Nontsikelelo Thesane said: “We are expected to beg and borrow. We are expected to ask our peers for money to survive. We need to ask those that have received funding and those who are home to pitch in ... and this is money that must come from the sky.”
The university has since promised the students that it was working on the matter.
University spokesperson Lusani Netshitomboni said: “The university has been engaging with NSFAS since January to make sure that theproblems have been resolved, but up to now they have not been resolved. Will pay by April 7,” he said.
NSFAS vowed to pay the students by last Thursday but that did not happen last week.
Despite the organisation’s woes of non-payment to the university last month, the scheme promised to increase the student living allowances by 10%, and will backdate this to the beginning of the 2023 academic year.
Pretoria News