The EFF Student Command (EFFSC) has called on the University of Johannesburg (UJ) management to bring in accountants to prevent the return of unused funds that were meant for impoverished students to assist those who were left behind.
EFFSC chairman, Terrence Langa, who is also UJ Student Council chairman, made the call following this week’s revelation that the university returned R311-million in unallocated National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funds stemming from 2016 to 2021.
According to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), the university sat on the funds instead of ensuring that NSFAS collects and redistributes them back to needy students.
“The unallocated funds are monies that were for students who qualified for funding but either changed institutions or deregistered. The funds stay in the possession of the institution for a year.
“The payment made by UJ brings the total amount received from institutions of higher learning to approximately R349.3-million since the inception of the NSFAS investigation in September 2022.
“The unallocated funds were supposed to have been col-lected by NSFAS at the end of each year from institutions of higher learning through reconciliation,” said SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago.
Langa said accounting went together with accountability.
“The NSFAS must have a reliable cash solutions service provider that will ensure there is implementation of controls to ensure there is an annual reconciliation between the funds disbursed to the institutions and the funding list of registered students.
“Both NSFAS and universities should be held accountable to ensure that there’s a remedy to ensure that all unallocated funds must at all times be collected by NSFAS at the end of each year,” Langa said.
The UJ Student Council chairperson also said that the failure to use these accounting controls had resulted in direct pain among students kept out of the NSFAS funding system.
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