NSFAS students laptop procurement delays ‘unacceptable’, says parliament

Parliament has expressed concern over delays in procurement of laptops for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) qualifying students.

“It is now four months since Minister Blade Nzimande announced that government will procure laptops for all NSFAS qualifying students in universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges,” said the chairperson of the portfolio committee on higher education, science and technology Philly Mapulane.

Mapulane said this had been part of government’s strategy to facilitate multi-modal remote learning and teaching methodologies in order to save the 2020 academic year as a result of the country being placed under lockdown.

“Students have since been eagerly awaiting the delivery of these laptops which to date remain undelivered as a result of unnecessary delays in the finalisation of the procurement processes by NSFAS.”

He said the committee was greatly concerned about the allegations brought to their entity. It said the allegations included the interference with the procurement processes of the laptops.

“Attempts are being made to manipulate the procurement process, and to finally get it aborted because certain service providers are not recommended following supply chain management processes of NSFAS.”

He said the committee took these allegations seriously and would be following them up with the Administrator of NSFAS, Dr Randall Carolisen.

“We would like to appeal to Carolisen not to allow any undue interference with the supply chain management processes of NFSAS, and to speedily conclude this process of the procurement of the laptops so that students from poor and working-class families can be able to study and be taught remotely.

“The country cannot afford another Covid-19 procurement scandal.”

This also comes after NSFAS had also concluded an agreement with South African Revenue Service (Sars) to provide NSFAS access to latest tax data in order to validate the household income of applicants.

NSFAS will now also be able to include other income such as investment and rental income in the assessment of its application.

“Our initial analysis shows that more than 125,000 new students in 2020 come from households in the informal sector,” said Carolissen.

“NSFAS is truly providing for the most vulnerable and the poor members of our society by opening up gateways out of poverty.”

He said the shift to providing for learning material for NSFAS students to include digital devices would not only address technology-enabled pedagogy over the lockdown period but would move South African education into the modern era offering access to wider resources and teaching materials.

NSFAS has since confirmed that a total of 5,000 students who were funded for the 2020 academic year have been “unfunded”.

NSFAS spokesperson Phatisa Ntlonze said: “Recent financial information obtained from the Sars revealed that these students’ declared total household family income was above the R350,000 threshold.”

This article first appeared on Rekord and was republished with permission.

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