NSFAS TUT Polokwane students sleeping outside due to ‘lapsed lease’

A number of students from the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Polokwane Campus were evicted from their residences. Reports have estimated that around 100 students were removed from their Limpopo residences.

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) university scholars said the lodge they were staying in evicted them as their lease had lapsed. The students had been staying at the lodge since the beginning of the year and they were evicted just before the weekend.

The students said they did not feel safe sleeping outside the university gate. They slept there on Sunday evening. They have claimed that the university has refused to licence the lodge and renew the lease for them.

A student told SABC News that they had been chased and had nowhere to stay.

“We’ve been staying there for the past three months and the landlord says we must stay because TUT management said that they are still in the process to accredit that accommodation. We stayed outside where my friend got very; very sick to a point where she was admitted to hospital, she could not speak, she was unconscious. The sad part is that it was raining and we were forced to come here because we had no place to sleep. So we asked to get inside the premises and they did not allow us to get in,”

said the student.

University reportedly taking the matter ‘seriously’

TUT spokesperson Phaphama Tshisikhawe said the university understands and is aware of the frustrations. Tshisikhawe says there is a crisis impacting universities all over SA and that the university is taking the matter raised by the students seriously.

“This is a crisis affecting universities across the country. Now we wish to inform our students that the university has taken the matter seriously and we working closely with campus management, campus SRC and student accommodation facilities in order to resolve this matter as quickly as possible,”

Tshisikhawe said.