STUDENTS USE ALLOWANCE TO TAKE CARE OF FAMILIES

MANZINI - Tears, confusion and financial woes are some of the frustrations for students like Mpendulo Dlamini amid the closure of institutions of higher learning due to the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19).

In fact, just like the others sectors, institutions of higher learning were unprepared for the challenges that are coming with the outbreak of coronavirus and the situation is worse for students from underpriviledged families.

An investigation carried out by this publication revealed that the outbreak of coronavirus was an external shock to the higher education system that will shine the light on inequality that has been previously been ignored.

Welcome

This is more so because some students do not have homes that will easily welcome them back, worse if the working family members have been laid off without payment due to the ongoing partial lockdown in the country.

Again, some institutions of higher learning have introduced online teaching and learning, which means that the laid-off parents and guardians have to finance the students with enough data bundles to continue with their studies.

However, in some cases, government-sponsored students find themselves using their monthly allowances (about E1 690 for off-campus students and E650 for on-campus students) to take care of their families during the partial lockdown as the breadwinners were on unpaid lay-offs.

Due to that, off-campus students, who rent flats around their campuses, are having trouble in paying their rent and this is a dilemma which Dlamini, who is a student at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT), is faced with.

Dlamini, of Mafutseni in the Manzini Region, is from a family of six, who include his parents and three siblings (two sisters and a brother). He said his mother worked in one of the textile factories in Matsapha while his father was unemployed.

On that note, he said his status in the family had changed from being a scholar as he was now acting as a breadwinner since his mother was on unpaid leave. He said the situation forced him to use the little allowance he was getting from government to take care of his family.

“This means that I cannot afford to pay rent for my flat in Mbabane. I am afraid to even approach my landlord because I know that he is expecting the rent since it is his family’s income,” the student said.

Slash

He said if he could get the courage to approach his landlord, he could ask him to at least slash the rent by half for the duration of the partial lockdown with the view of paying the balance once things were back to normal.
“I cannot imagine what the self-sponsored students are going through since every fee comes from their parents’ pockets,” the student said.

However, the scholar mentioned that if government, through the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), could prioritise the programme of distributing food parcels to the vulnerable families like his, maybe the situation could be better.  In that regard, the LUCT Student Representative Council (SRC) has written letters to most landlords and pleaded with them to defer rental payments for a certain period of time.

In their letter, which was confirmed by LUCT SRC Vice President Lindelani Zwane, the council said it was with great concern that students were facing difficulties in paying their rent due to lack of financial support during the outbreak of the pandemic (COVID-19).

The SRC said the institution consisted of many students who were underprivileged as they came from needy families. They said some of their parents were unemployed, while others were working on farms as well as textile factories in the country which had been closed during the partial lockdown, which was aimed at flattening the curve.

They argued that the little money the students were getting from government, was now consumed by the needs of their families as the administration of the country was failing to support its poverty stricken citizens.
“This means that the poverty-stricken populace are fighting two battles; hunger as well as COVID-19,” reads part of the SRC letter to landlords.

On that note, they said they were hoping that the students’ landlords could assist the nation, in particular the students, by not collecting rent for this month until the situation was better.

Important

“Human life is more important than anything,” they said.
Meanwhile, Thabiso Khumalo, who is leasing out houses to 12 LUCT scholars, confirmed that some of them had not paid rent for April and May 2020.
He said five students paid in full while one had not paid even a cent.

He said there were six other students who were sharing a big house and their rent was E3 000 per month.
He said they paid E1 200 for April 2020 and cited that they were still trying to organise the balance from their parents.

“Now it’s already May and they have not paid in full the April 2020 rent, which means I have been patient with them,” the landlord said.
He mentioned that he was also using the rent money to take care of his family, which meant that at the end, he expected them to pay.

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