The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) says it cannot at this stage say whether anyone at the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) should be held accountable for activities flagged in its investigation into the funding of students.
SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said investigations which started in September were still in the early stages and no one from NSFAS has been implicated in the alleged payment of R5.1bn to more than 40,000 students who did not qualify for bursaries.
“We’re doing the investigation in stages and right now we’re looking at funding given to students and IT systems. We’re only six months into the investigation. “For now, we’ve not arrived at that stage. We don’t want to give the impression that there’s no collusion where NSFAS staff are concerned but we’ve simply not arrived at that stage.”
“We need to go clinically to each and every one to understand what the issues is,” Kganyago said.
A lead investigator who cannot be named appeared before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) and said their probe had uncovered that NSFAS made the payments between 2018 and 2021.
The investigator said they were tracing all the students in order to identify them and assess at what point did they not qualify for the bursary. “These are students whose household income is above R350,000 and therefore would not qualify for NSFAS funding based on the funding rules.
“These students did not submit their parents’ details upon application and therefore awarded the bursary. We have interviewed several affected students and parents to obtain addition information.
“Some students admitted that they did not qualify to receive the NSFAS funding of which we are currently pursuing looking at the amount received by non-qualifying students,” the investigator said.
The investigator revealed that 77 institutions around the country paid out R5.1bn to 44,044 students who did not qualify.
The investigator revealed there were instances where some institutions or their officials colluded with students in order to defraud NSFAS.
“We don’t have the number for now but in terms of wilfully misled, there are some categories that we’ve identified that in some instances it’s students who obtain information from grandparents or uncles who don’t get enough money and in some instances [university staff] have some role to play because they are the ones who submit list to NSFAS...
“The investigation is ongoing, we’ve identified some of them where we’re obtaining application form to see who signed and who completed the application form so we can see who misled and we can see liability,” the investigator said.
The investigation is expected to be complete in 12 months.
The investigator said some of the observations they made include that NSFAS failed to design and implement controls to ensure annual reconciliation between the funds disbursed to the institutions and the allocation of those funds to the students.
“This control weakness led to overpayments and underpayments of funds to the different institutions for the period 2017 to date. In the past it was difficult for the NSFAS to identify fraudulent applications for student loans or bursaries – as they did not have access to systems such as SA Revenue Service, home affairs, ITC etc.
“Inherent weaknesses and flaws in IT systems has prevailed. Systems are vulnerable and can be hacked with relative ease, resulting in the creation of fictitious students, payments being made to such fictitious students,” the investigator said.
NSFAS board chairperson Ernest Khosa revealed that the CEO of the financial scheme, Andile Nyongogo, had received threatening SMSes as they tried to turn the situation around from “mafia” landlords who would be cut out.
nkosin@sowetan.co.za
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