NSFAS News On Fraudulent Payment
In todays latest NSFAS News – The National Student Financial Aid Scheme wasted billions of rands on thousands of students who weren’t qualified to get it. The financial aid program, however, is certain that the procedures they have implemented in recent years will make this no longer happen.
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) had paid billions of rands to students who were not qualified for support.
NSFAS is worried that the results of the SIU are being distorted. While the financial aid scheme acknowledged the SIU’s findings, it wished to reassure its constituents that it was not facilitating any illegal activities.
NSFAS Board Chair Ernest Khosa has stated that the SIU’s conclusions do not reflect the ongoing efforts of the financial aid program. The SIU’s findings, they said, are based on NSFAS’s activities prior to the year 2023.
There is no longer any doubt in my mind that the problem is not as severe as it was back then.
In an effort to root out wasteful spending and sloppy management, President Cyril Ramaphosa has requested the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) to look into NSFAS. The duration of the SIU’s probe into NSFAS’s activities between August of 2016 and July of 2022.
NSFAS lost almost R5 billion due to the inappropriate use of funds by about 40 thousand students.
Khosa claims that NSFAS has significantly upgraded its systems and verification procedures, and that various new safeguards have been implemented to prevent cases where ineligible students obtain funding.
The NSFAS Board wants to reassure everyone involved that these types of fraud are no longer commonplace thanks to the established procedures.
The NSFAS maintains that the scale of fraud is not as widespread as in prior years.
NSFAS is able to check information supplied by students asking for financing, according to NSFAS Spokesperson Slumezi Skosana, because of partnerships with other government departments and companies.
NSFAS applicants must provide evidence of financial need in the form of various different papers. The Department of Home Affairs, the South African Revenue Service, and others get these documents from NSFAS for verification purposes.
Student must be a South African citizen, enrolled in an approved degree at a public university or TVET college, and have a household income of less than R350k per year to be eligible for NSFAS support. For pupils with disabilities, the cutoff for family income is R600,000.
Skosana warns that investigators need to keep their sanity and refrain from being overly litigious and vindictive while looking into cases of students receiving NSFAS funds in error.
Students who were wrongly awarded assistance are suspected of having lied about their financial situation in order to qualify for aid.
