MANCOSA SAGA

The Mancosa Saga

16 March 2022: Try to keep up

I finally received confirmation on my bursary being approved. I immediately reached out to Mancosa and enquired about the necessary steps. I was then told by the student adviser to submit the required documents.

Knowing the cut-off-date for submission would be end of March, I scrambled to obtain the necessary certifications and gather what was requested from me. 25 March 2022: My first (of many) submission. After bit of a back and forth, but I managed to send through all documents they had requested, not receiving any acknowledgment.

26 March: Nothing... 27 March: Nothing...

28 March 2022: I decided to take initiative and attempted to follow up with an email, to which I greeted with an “out of office” automatic response. Apparently my student adviser was now on maternity leave. I had no knowledge of this, prior. I then decided to abandon the keyboard, for the moment and make a direct call to the Pretoria office and was advised to deal with another student adviser. Which lead to...

28 March 2022: The second submission. My new adviser advised me to resend the documents in the ‘proper format’.

29 March 2022: The third submission in ‘proper format’ Again, no acknowledgment. I was aware that time was running out and, again took initiative with a follow up email the next day.

30 March: Nothing...

31 March: Nothing...

A few hours later...

My old student adviser (Maternity leave) advised me that she would, once again be advising me. Was there an end in sight??

Alas, communications went dark, again. More initiative! So I called the office, again. The receptionist then advised me to register next semester. To which I rep**** with a negative because of the bursary and some fine print. The receptionist then had a talk with the Second Adviser (29 March/ proper format) to which he advised that I still had documents outstanding ??? I questioned this claim and retorted that, even if the documents fell short of requirements, ‘why didn’t he just reply to my email on the 29th?

Again, no response.

Even More Initiative! I resent the email and was, once again advised to deal with my initial adviser (Maternity Leave) and,

RESUBMIT MY DOCUMENTS.

1 April 2022: I request feedback... 1 April 2022: Nothing... 2 April 2022: Nothing... 3 April 2022: you guessed it...Nothing. 4 April 2022: My adviser emailed me to say that she has now been admitted to hospital, but will still assist me???

Today is the 6th of April and I am yet to hear from Mancosa. Besides obviously and deliberately giving me the run-around, with enough red tape to create a road hazard, this type of service is the definition of incompetence. I mean, this is literally your job!? There is so much wrong here that I would leave it up to the reader to unpack. Now I run the risk of being benched for a year (If I am lucky) because bursaries do not just come around whenever you need it.