Nsfas one of govt’s success stories – Blade Nzimande

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) is not in crisis, says Dr Blade Nzimande, minister of higher education, science and innovation, describing it as one of the government’s successes.

For months students have called on the minister to sort out Nsfas’ late payments, service fee increases and non-payments.

READ: ‘We are not hiding anything,’ says Nzimande on allegations against Nsfas CEO Andile Nongogo

Ongoing dissatisfaction with Nsfas saw students take to the street in August. They were issued with letters of suspension after the march turned violent and police had to disperse the protest.

Yesterday, Nzimande finally broke his silence: “Nsfas has successfully served the needs of the vast majority of poor students… (It) may be having glitches but the scheme is not in a crisis.”

Nzimande said since 1991, the fund had grown from disbursing R21.4 million to almost R50 billion to fund students seeking to further their studies at public universities and technical and vocational education and training (Tvet) colleges.

“This is a clear indication that government has prioritised a massive increase in student funding to radically broaden access to those sections of our communities who had no access to postschool education and training.”

Nzimande said 1.1 million applications had been received through the scheme’s online application portal, of which 156 700 of these applications were South African Social Security Agency beneficiaries.

A total of 509 220 claims were received from university students to the value of R40 billion. “We have already paid 491 457 students an amount of R29.6 billion.

“There are 23 389 students with exceptions that we are currently funding. “Nsfas received 250 548 claims from Tvet college students to the value of R6.8 billion. Nsfas paid 209 352 students at R4.8 billion.

“The difference is of 10 374 students, which will be paid after the previous disbursement,” he said.

Nzimande said another milestone of the scheme was the integration of all public universities and Tvet colleges to a student centre module which meant the movement of the funds between Nsfas and the students was faster.

Investigations were still being undertaken regarding the appointment of direct payment to service providers.

“I am currently awaiting the final report on the Nsfas investigations into the process of the appointment of the four direct payments programme partners, following public allegations on the process of their appointment,” he said.

Nsfas appointed two lawyers to investigate the allegations against Nongogo and review the entity’s procurement systems and processes.

Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) laid a criminal complaint against former chief executive of the Services Sector Education and Training Authority Andile Nongogo after an investigation revealed R37 million had allegedly been wasted due to inflated prices.

Outa said the invoices were signed off by Nongogo. Nzimande said it remained the government’s commitment to transform the post-school education system and ensure that no student was excluded from accessing government funding.

Additional reporting Unathi Nkanjeni.