The Fund for Genocide Survivors (FARG) will sponsor students under its care who did not qualify for government sponsorship under the Students Financing Agency for Rwanda (SFAR), officials have said.

"If some of FARG students in secondary qualify for government sponsorship, they are always under the responsibility of SFAR,” Jean de Dieu Udahemuka FARG’s Communication’s Officer told The Sunday Times.

"But those who lost out will be our responsibility. We are still looking into the issue,” he said.

Udahemuka said that FARG will next week get the total number of students after further consultations with SFAR.

This saga developed after 1,500 students from ten universities became stranded after reporting for studies hoping that the names that appeared in government owned Imvaho Nshya were those to be considered for SFAR’s loan scheme.

The students accused the financing agency of turning around and omitting their names from the original list of the beneficiaries.

However, the Director General of SFAR, Emmanuel Muvunyi preferred to call the mix-up a ‘blatant oversight’ saying that the students based their argument on the lists that were released by the National Examinations Council  and not those released by the agency.

He said the lists only indicated students who have been admitted in the respective universities and had nothing to do with SFAR scholarships.

Until 2008, students who had been considered for government scholarships under SFAR were published in Imvaho.

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