Deputy Minister Buti Manamela visits Central Application Clearing House Call Centre

The Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training, Buti Manamela visited the Central Application Clearing House (CACH) Call Centre in Randburg for a walk about, today.

The visit at the Call Centre formed part of the registration monitoring process the Deputy Minister has been conducting nationally at institutions of higher learning. It also gave the Deputy Minister the opportunity to interact with the call centre agents, giving him first-hand experience of the daily operations of the call centre.

CACH opened on 4 January for the 2019 academic year and will operate until 28 February 2019. It is particularly useful for applicants or individuals who have applied for admission to a university or college, but have not been offered a place in their programme of choice.

Briefing the Deputy Minister on the overall interactions or how the CACH communication channels were utilised by applicants, Mr Matthews Makgopela, CACH Project Manager in the Department of Higher Education and Training said 26 145 applicants used the Short Message Service (SMS) to access the service, 11 941 used the telephone service and 4 671 used the Voice Mail service while 8 846 applicants used the email to get access to the service.

In the two weeks of CACH 2019 campaign, the service has already had a total of approximately 52 000 enquiries. Of the 52 000 enquiries, a total of 32 716 applications were signed up by CACH. A number of 18 216 applicants were captured during the first week and 12 500 were captured between 12 and 22 January 2019.

Of the 18 216 captured during the first week, 11 116 captured themselves on line and the 7 100 called in and where captured by the call centre agents.

From the 12 500 applicants who were captured in the second week, 3 700 registered themselves online while 8 800 called in and were captured by the call centre agents. Mr Makgopela indicated that the 2019 statistics have so far shown a significant increase in the usage of CACH when compared to last year’s. For the entire period of the 2018 CACH campaign, only a total of 34 000 applicants were registered on the CACH system while in the 2019 campaign, 32 716 are already registered within the first two weeks of the campaign.

Enquiries:
William Lebohang Somo - Communication and Media Liaison
Tel: 012 312 5051
Cell: 072 270 1487
E-mail: Somo William@dhet.gov.za