Auckland Students say it’s Time for WINZ to Face the Music
“The time for the culture of incompetence is over, it’s about time that WINZ came to campus to face the music,” said
Auckland University Students’ Association President, Kane Stanford today.
Mr Stanford challenged WINZ CEO, Christine Rankin to come to campus and explain to students who have lodged their
application several weeks ago, why they will have make do without money for food, rent, power and transport for the next
few weeks due to incompetent processing of student loans.
“I find it insulting that WINZ is trying to use students as a way to of covering up for their own mismanagement,” said
Mr Stanford.
Mr. Stanford said that AUSA is demanding that the processing of student loans and allowances to return to individual
campuses as the new centralized service has created more problems than it has intended to solve.
“The experiment has failed,” said Mr Stanford. “While WINZ has assured us that this new centralized system would be more
efficient than local processing, the opposite seems to be true.”
The most common problems that students have dealing with WINZ appear to be lost applications, being disconnected because
of the phone system overloading, and wrong application packs being sent out.
“AUSA believes that the best place for loans processing is on campus with students, not some distant call center,” said
Mr Stanford.
“Enrolment is a very stressful time for students, and WINZ’s incompetence is only compounding the situation. Three
people and cell phone is not sufficient to handle the thousands of Auckland University students who rely on WINZ to pay
the bills.”
“I call on the CEO of WINZ and the Minister of Social Services and Employment to rectify the problem as soon as
possible,” concluded Mr. Stanford.
ENDS