The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) reportedly spent around R5 billion on students who did not qualify for financial aid. The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) conducted an investigation between 2018 and 2021 that has raised concerns regarding the State's failure to recover this money.
This was revealed when the SIU presented a draft presentation to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts regarding NSFAS's proclamation on Tuesday. The presentation revealed that more 40 000 undeserving students from over 70 institutions irregularly benefitted from National Student Financial Aid Scheme
The SIU’s investigation also found that because the scheme’s system was not connected to the South African Revenue Service or Home Affairs, SIU determined that institutions are unable to recognise fraudulent applications. Another vulnerability is related to NSFAS's IT system weaknesses.
DA’s Higher Education spokesperson, Chantel King went on to say that the period of the scheme’s irregular spending correlated with the introduction of fee-free education, adding that this is a time when NSFAS was vulnerable to a lack of proper oversight into its funding operations.
“We must also be mindful that most of these anomalies occurred basically between 2018 to 2019 and slightly into 2020. This when the bad policy of fee-free education was haphazardly introduced which basically created a big gap and a loophole for these irregularities to occur”
She further states that there were no proper funding criteria available at the time as well as no clarity regarding how NSFAS would transition from a loan system to a bursary system.
South African Union of Students' Spokesperson, Asive Dlanjwa adds that solely on the basis that there may have been students and officials who sought to exploit the system, measures should be in place to recoup the misused funds.
Both King and Dlanjwa have called for further punitive measures against those responsible but say it is often the process of referring these findings to the National Prosecution Authority that tends to take too long to materialize.
President Cyril Ramaphosa authorised the SIU to investigate allegations of corruption and maladministration in the affairs of NSFAS, and to recover any financial losses suffered by the State through corruption and negligence in August last year.
