Education

NSFAS makes inroads on student accommodation woes

Luis Monzon

10th June 2024

NSFAS says that it is on track to sort out the student accommodation problem plaguing the scheme and its beneficiaries.
The scheme has already issued a bulk payment for student accommodation allowances for June 2024.
NSFAS will hear complaints from private and public accommodation providers around the country at a conference held in September this year.

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) says it has made progress in addressing problems with accommodation for its beneficiaries, firstly with a bulk payment processed by the end of May 2024 of accommodation allowances.

Chaos at the scheme since early 2023 and a poorly implemented student accommodation accreditation system left hundreds of students in the lurch into the 2024 academic year. In February, hundreds of beneficiaries were forced to live and sleep in the hall of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) due to NSFAS’ accommodation accreditation process, as reported by GroundUp.

The process meant that private accommodation providers and public institutions like universities had to register beds on the NSFAS accommodation portal at a cost of R100 or R200 per bed. NSFAS would only inspect accommodation after the payment was made.

“Once the accommodation is approved, a certificate of compliance will be issued, and only after that, accommodation – which NSFAS would pay – could be made available for student,” said OUTA in a statement describing the process.

This meant huge delays in institutions receiving accreditation for accommodation, well into the academic year when classes had already started. Hundreds of NSFAS beneficiaries then had no proper place to live and sleep.

At the beginning of 2024, NSFAS announced that it would need 397 000 beds for its beneficiaries at universities and TVET colleges around the country. By October 2023, just over 25 000 were accredited.

Now in June 2024, NSFAS is pleading with private accommodation suppliers and landlords who still have outstanding payment claims to not evict NSFAS beneficiaries. “NSFAS is committed to ensuring that all legitimate claims are resolved not later than 18 June 2024,” the scheme said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the new NSFAS administrator Freeman Nomvalo said that the scheme has established a task team comprised of “all the student accommodation stakeholders” to address all issues related to student accommodation.

“We do so in order to regularize private student accommodation to give greater certainty for future investments, safety of students and standardisation of private accommodation,” Nomvalo said in a speech issued to the media on 27th May.

“We have commenced with the planning for the national conference on future student accommodation. We intend to host the conference in September 2024 involving various stakeholders across the country including private and public accommodation providers,” he said.