Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 23/00) - Student Financial Assistance workers are starting to feel the pressure with college and university fall sessions looming.

According to Bruce Evelyn, acting deputy minister for advanced education and careers, the Student Financial Assistance (SFA) office had to hire 12 additional case workers to cope with a backlog of applications from students seeking assistance.

Evelyn said changes to the SFA program, made in late March, are the cause of delays that has put the office a week and a half behind schedule.

"We got a bit of a late start processing the applications," Evelyn said.

"We had a late re-design of the program that was approved by the (Legislative) Assembly at the end of March. They approved the program ... but once you change the program you have to change a multi-million dollar computer system, re-design forms, and re-design the application itself."

Evelyn also said that SFA officers are not the only ones who have had to cope with the changes, but that students themselves have experienced some confusion and that too has added to the delays.

"Because the program now is different than in years past, the program that students understood, we get quite a bit higher volume of calls from students going, 'Gee, I used to understand it last year, explain it to me this year, how has it changed?'" Evelyn said.

Even though some students are still awaiting news about the assistance applications, Evelyn said he expects everyone will hear from SFA sometime this week.

He expects this year's delays to be a one-time problem and that things should return to normal next year.

"It's a new program," Evelyn said. "As much as the staff are familiar with the program, the process of how to do it is different now, so it's a learning curve for them."