Students suffer while blame game continues
APRIL 2024 has arrived, and many students at tertiary educational institutions are in the middle of exam preparation and assessments, while the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) recipients are struggling to meet their daily basic needs, such as food. Once again, as a nation, we are perpetuating poverty among the university communities across South Africa.
The scheme needs to disburse funds to students timeously. This has huge negative implications for students who have no other means of financial support. The allowances are meant for registration and tuition fees, personal care, transport and accommodation. Many students from rural areas who study in the cities primarily depend on the grants for food and daily living expenses. The fund is available and accessible to students for the duration of their studies, providing they meet the academic requirements to pass annually.
It has been previously reported that the process of receiving the funds in their personal banking accounts is tedious, yet this is the only means for students to access the funds efficiently. There have been problems with the financial technological platforms used by the scheme to disburse funds. In January this year, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said Ezaga, the financial technological platform, was to blame for the lack of timeous service delivery.
Journalist Okuhle Hlati reported in the Cape Argus that Werksmans Attorneys discovered that the appointment of Ezaga and others as direct payment service providers was irregular. It was recommended that the service providers’ contracts be terminated. Despite the recommendation, the contracted fintech companies – eZaga Holdings, Tenet Technology, Noracco Corporation and Coinvest Africa – resumed in April 2024.
It was reported that the legal official termination processes warranted the reinstatement of their services. The purpose of the legal recommendation was to avoid the NSFAS becoming inefficient and to ensure that students received their funds timeously. Students have said the banking service providers were dodgy and lacked credibility because of their ad hoc systematic approach when the funds were being disbursed.
There seems to be a culture of the blame game that has developed in recent years in most government service delivery initiatives. Once again, the funds were not disbursed timeously, and fintech platforms blamed NSFAS. The mere fact that the NSFAS and the fintech platforms continue to point fingers at each other calls for an urgent external vetting system and an effective evaluation approach that is inclusive of accountability and transparency.
The blame-game approach can be detrimental in the long term, as stakeholders may struggle to identify the problem in another sphere. In addition, we have a focus on who is to be blamed instead of how to address the debacle The public has been informed that the debacle’s fault either lies with the NSFAS or the fintech companies. More than that, parents and students are left scrambling to look for emergency financial aid and they stress about how they are going to manage until the funds are available. Furthermore, neither dates nor time lines have been indicated. For many students, the waiting period is severely challenging.
The negative implications of funding that is not emphasised is the fact that a student would have the capacity to be appropriately engaged intellectually in the teaching and learning process on if their basic needs were met. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs clearly articulates that the foundation pillar of a human being includes food, shelter and other basic necessities.
The lack of access to food and other basic necessities fuels a motivation for deviant behaviour and crime amid university communities. Often, students steal to eat and pay their travel expenses. This jeopardises the safety of students on campuses and, once again, is disruptive towards a peaceful application of an educational curriculum.
Knowledge exchange happens only when basic needs are met and are not of concern to either the teacher or student. A hungry student cannot concentrate or absorb the information taught. Research has found that concentration and effective learning can occur only when one eats and sleeps healthily and has a less troubled mind. In addition, the lack of access to basic necessities can also spur on multiple psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression and stress. All inevitably impact the overall health of students and their capacity to learn.
In these instances, the effectiveness of the teaching and learning processes nationally is negatively impacted. The debacle is rather inappropriately timed as students are preparing for their midyear exams in May and June, and the preparation for the assessments takes place now.
Once again, the objective to financially aid students timeously is not being met and the consequences are dire for the university communities and students. More importantly, students are put through severe implications because they have no access to funding.
A payment deadline should be communicated to all NSFAS recipients. Furthermore, they have a right to know how this problem, which still persists, will be resolved.