Still waiting on a reprint

I obtained my PGCE through Unisa; but that’s another story involving lots of frustration and wasted years. Not that I’m bitter about that, anymore. My latest issue concerns how Unisa treats its alumni.

Living overseas, I hired DocAssist to register me with SACE. One of the documents entrusted to them was my original PGCE certificate. This could not be helped, however DocAssist accepted the responsibility, only to immediately ‘misplace’ the document. That was November 2020. To this day, it has not been recovered. Then began a dual battle – get Docassist to look for the certificate and get Unisa to replace it. Both wars have been fruitless, so they continue. Unisa refuses to reprint certificates as they claim that in the past copies have been used for ‘nefarious purposes’. They hold to this policy and absolutely refuse to replace the certificate, despite the fact that (a) they should be investigating DocAssist for potential ‘nefarious activities’; and (b) not everywhere in the world accepts their ‘statement in lieu’, which is all they will issue for a missing certificate. I am annoyed that I am being punished for DocAssist’s failure and highly frustrated that the people at Unisa hide behind their policies, rather than do what they can to support their alumni.