Desperate students at eThekwini TVET College appeal for help amid accommodation challenges
Durban: Students at eThekwini TVET College have been protesting outside the Centec campus in Morningside this week demanding urgent solutions to the accommodation problems they are faced with.
The issue of student accommodation is a serious challenge every year with many students complaining about problems with NSFAS among other issues.
The TVET college students say they are provisionally funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) but are being unfairly forced out of their residences due to the college's administrative failures.
However the college has said that the NSFAS has only provided 20% funding which means the students do not qualify for accommodation.
Nondumiso Thabede, one of the affected students, shared her ordeal, saying she and her peers were left stranded with nowhere to go after being told to vacate their residence.
“We applied for NSFAS and were provisionally funded. But there is no feedback from the college regarding our accommodation,” Thabede said.
“What happens is that you apply for accommodation through the NSFAS portal, then you view the place and sign the relevant documents. We did that, but now we are being told to leave.”
Thabede said that on January 28 students were forced out of their residence at night and had to seek help at a nearby informal settlement.
“We were scared and had nowhere to go. They told us to go to Jadhu informal settlement, where there are shack dwellings. When we got there, we were approached by unknown men who asked us where we were going. We told them we were stranded, and they took us in,” she said.
The students were then divided into groups and taken to different shacks by one of the men.
“These were small shacks, and we didn’t even know these men. We were scared. They were drinking and kept checking on us. We feared for our safety because at one moment, we woke up in the middle of the night and a strange man was inside the shack,” Thabede recalled.
The students later managed to return to their residence but are being told they must vacate again.
“Where we are, we did all the required steps to be in this residence. We received SMSes calling us to come and view the residence, which means we are indeed funded. It is very strange that they now tell us to leave,” Thabede said.
The students said they believed that the problems were due to an administrative failure by the college.
“They say our data hasn’t been submitted to the owners of the residences, so the lease agreement doesn’t mean anything. We are technically not recognised as students. The college needs to send our data to landlords,” she added.
Buntu Faku, former Central Student Representative Council member for the EFF Student Command (EFFSC), said the issue stems from the college management's decision to register students under another bursary system from the Finance and Accounting Services Sector Education and Training Authority (FASSET) instead of NSFAS.
“We have N4 financial management students who applied for NSFAS and were funded, but now the campus manager has decided to force them to register with FASSET. NSFAS covers tuition, allowances, and accommodation, but FASSET does not provide accommodation. Now, these students are being chased out of their residences,” Faku said.
However, eThekwini TVET College principal Nkosinathi Mchunu refuted the students' claims.
He said while the students were “provisionally funded” by NSFAS this meant they receive 20% in the funding grid from the department.
He explained that he had find additional funding and had approached the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) including FASSET which had provided funding.
He said this funding allows students to get a transport allowance so they can either stay at home or find other rentals.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.