Dear Editor
The DA calls for urgent intervention from the Minister of Higher Education and Training. The DA’s recent unannounced oversight visit to the student accommodation facilities at Westcoast College in Citrusdal found conditions that are simply unacceptable in a constitutional democracy. Please see photos here, here, here, here and here.
Most of the students living in this accommodation, funded by NSFAS, are forced to live in cockroach-infested rooms, with ten crammed into a single space and sleeping on mattresses laid directly on the floor, posing serious health and safety risks. More than 300 students share one microwave. About 32 students are forced to share just two ablution facilities.
These are not statistics; they are the degrading daily realities faced by young South Africans trying to build their futures.
The Auditor-General has already flagged serious deficiencies in NSFAS’s controls and accountability systems. Without urgent intervention to fix implementation bottlenecks, strengthen oversight, and enforce consequence management, any new plan will collapse under the same dysfunction.
The DA has written to the Minister of Higher Education and Training to intervene and investigate how students are being placed in such disgraceful conditions. In addition, we are pushing for immediate reforms to ensure that every cent of student funding benefits students, not landlords, intermediaries, or politically connected service providers. This must stop, and it must stop now.
The DA will continue to fight to put students at the centre of every decision made in the post-school education and training sector.
Regards
Mathlodi Maseko MP
DA Spokesperson on Higher Education