Oppidan: Jessie Ditshego
I arrived on the 14th of January, for the Executive’s o-week preparation and strategic planning for the year.
The 2019 registration period came with various challenges, most of which required immediate solutions from my office. These among others were:
- Students who lost their res allocations due to late payments and needed to find alternative accommodation
- First-year students who were still waiting for their funding confirmation from NSFAS and needed emergency accommodation.
- NSFAS students who were unable to pay for accommodation as allowance payouts had not yet been made.
- Returning students who had no accommodation as they were awaiting their NSFAS appeal outcomes, some of these students expressed their need for meal provision.
How challenges were tackled:
- Along-side with the Oppidan Committee, we communicated with various rental agencies and helped most of our students find off-campus accommodation. This process included negotiating with landlords to accommodate NSFAS students at lower rates.
- Obtained letters of NSFAS payment confirmation for landlords who needed reassurance that although NSFAS payments had not been made, students will receive their first months' rent and deposit to cover their accommodation costs.
- Worked with the Residence Councillor, who helped secure on-campus emergency accommodation for Oppidan students who needed an immediate place to stay.
- Followed up on financial appeal cases submitted by returning Oppidans and ensured that those who needed accommodation or meal provision were helped through my office.
Additional duties:
I have chaired all Oppidan weekly Committee meetings as mandated by the Constitution.
I have also managed to secure a working relationship with one of our local stakeholders, who has sponsored over 300 loaves of bread. Bread was delivered on 2 occasions this month and made available in the Oppidan Common room for our students to collect. This process has run smoothly, and I hope with time this initiative can be extended to aiding Oppidan students with other necessities.
Oppidan Bus
It has been established that the operation of the Oppidan bus is costly and that there is a need for a new system. The unsustainable model from 2012 fails to cater for the increased number of bus users in 2019, this has raised serious safety concerns.
With the guiding principle of my office being “we do it right, or we don’t do it at all” we had to terminate the administration of the bus by the Oppidan Committee and explore the option of having it administered under a different party with the necessary infrastructure and expertise to do so.
I have attended several meetings with the VC’s office, DSA, Oppidan Committee, and SRC with aim of addressing this problem, and having the University committed itself to ensure that there is a sustainable, safe and efficient bus system in place for the transporting of its off-campus students.
The proposed solution is a pilot transport system that will run for the rest of the year under a private bus service provider. To finalize this system, with the hope of having it operational by the 2nd term, the University is assessing the financial model needed and ascertaining how much each stakeholder, including itself, will have to contribute.
‘Reconstruction involves knocking down walls to fix the system. So yes, it’s going to worse before it gets better.’
#ReconstructiveSRC