Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Mimmy Gondwe, has commended the recovery of R112 million in irregular payments from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to undeserving recipients.
This follows an investigation by the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) which revealed that NSFAS failed to design and implement controls to ensure that there is an annual reconciliation between the funds disbursed to institutions of higher learning and the allocation of those funds to the students.
A total of 421 students from across five universities and four Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges, who did not qualify to be funded by NSFAS have signed acknowledgement of debt agreements to pay back the money that was irregularly paid to them, according to the SIU.
“We commend the SIU for taking active steps to claw back irregular payments and send a clear message that abuse of the student funding system will not be tolerated,” Gondwe said.
The SIU has attributed these irregular payments to weak controls within NSFAS, which resulted in overpayments and underpayments from 2017 to date.
In a statement on Friday, Gondwe said the R112 million paid out to undeserving recipients potentially robbed 1 700 deserving students who could have been funded for at least one academic year.
She added that the department will accelerate its efforts to fix NSFAS and take the institution out of administration.
NSFAS has reportedly appointed a service provider to assist in performing the reconciliation via a “close-out reporting” process which is still ongoing.
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