Preliminary investigations by the special investigating unit (SIU) have revealed that more than R5-billion National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funds were possibly assigned to students who did not qualify for funding.
This was revealed by the SIU while presenting its findings to parliament’s standing committee on public accounts on Tuesday.
The investigations have thus far revealed that more than 40 000 students in 76 institutions of higher education have possibly been funded incorrectly.
“These are students whose household income is above R350 000 and therefore would not qualify for NSFAS funding based on the funding rules,” said the SIU.
“These students did not submit their parents’ details upon application and therefore the means test was not properly conducted.”
Furthermore, the SIU has facilitated a refund to ring-fence about R38.3-million possibly due to NSFAS from three technical and vocational education and training colleges.
“Two of these colleges are in the Western Cape and one is from Mpumalanga. The SIU is in the process of engaging other institutions to determine if they are holding any overpayments that need to be ring-fenced pending the finalisation of the investigation.”
Other institutions are still being verified to identify whether they owe NSFAS or vice-versa.
“We approached the institution to say we understand that based on our allocation that such money was paid to you over a period of time and as a result, this is money that you need to pay back to NSFAS because some of the students did not study at the institution or they left before they could complete their studies,” explained SIU’s chief national investigations officer Leonard Lekgetho.
“All along the money was sitting in an interest-bearing account and the moment we come, they quickly pay the money back to NSFAS.”
According to the SIU, NSFAS has failed to design and implement controls that would ensure that there is an annual reconciliation between funds disbursed to the institutions and the funded list of registered students.
The investigating unit has managed to identify different scenarios in terms of which students were funded because of overpayments, underpayments, unfunded students, double dipping and dropouts, and the involvement of syndicates in student accommodation.
Lekgetho indicated that the unit estimates that the probe will take about 18 months to complete.
“We are currently looking at incorrectly funded students, NSFAS financial management systems where we are looking at four projects, and the close-out reports per institution, which relates to overpayments to institutions,” he said.
He added that some students were awarded the NSFAS bursary despite not submitting their parents’ details upon application.
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