ATBU SIWES Students Allege Technical Neglect

Thousands of students currently undergoing or preparing for the Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) have raised an alarm over a persistent technical breakdown in the E-SIWES registration portal, despite fulfilling the mandatory school fee requirements.

The crisis follows a management circular issued on January 20, 2026, which made full school fee payment a prerequisite for accessing the portal to print official Acceptance Letters. However, students report that the portal remains inaccessible weeks after payment, leaving many unable to formalise their internships.

The delay has reportedly pushed some desperate students to submit "edited" versions of previous sessions' acceptance letters to their industrial employers—a move experts warn could lead to severe disciplinary action or the total nullification of their SIWES year.

"We paid our fees as directed to avoid being locked out, but the portal still doesn't recognise our status," one affected student lamented. "With the February 20, 2026, deadline fast approaching, we are effectively being forgotten while the university focuses on NELFUND administrative transitions."

The bottleneck appears to be linked to the ongoing integration of the National Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) into university bursary systems. The manual verification required to sync NELFUND-disbursed fees with individual student portals has caused a backlog, inadvertently locking out both self-funded students and loan beneficiaries from the E-SIWES infrastructure.

Students are calling on the Students' Union Government (SUG) and the Directorate of SIWES to take the following immediate steps:

Deadline Extension: An immediate shift of the February 20 cutoff to allow for technical resolution.

Manual Vetting: A temporary provision for students to present physical receipts at the SIWES office for manual issuance of Acceptance Letters.

ICT Synchronization: A transparent update from the University ICT Unit on the status of portal repairs.

Affected students are strongly advised to avoid using forged documents and instead maintain a paper trail of their official complaints to the ICT and SIWES departments to protect their academic standing.