Nehawu slams NSFAS administrator after 20,000 applications ‘went missing’

Close to 20,000 applications for government student financial aid disappeared after having been touched by the “hand of God”.

According to National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union’s (Nehawu), about 20,000 students applied for funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), but the applications were withdrawn without anyone touching the system, leading to applications not being processed.

Nehawu claims students’ applications disappeared in the 2019 application cycle.

This emerged during a meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Science on Friday where Nehawu made a presentation on the irregularities at NSFAS.

In its presentation to the committee, Nehawu said: “In other instances, the hand of God can withdraw the application after the student has been funded. The impact is that the student will not be able to register.

“There are only two employees in the disbursement unit namely, a specialist and a disbursement officer.

No experience

“The disbursement run is done by ICT developers with no experience in the process.

“Files must still be checked manually for errors. The transfer between operation and finance for payments is still happening on spreadsheets.”

The union claimed that NSFAS administrator Randall Carolissen had unilaterally restructured the existing organisational structure, creating new positions and making other parts redundant.

“The administrator has appointed employees in excess of the existing 465 board approved headcount. The current headcount is more than 500, with NSFAS continuing to recruit more employees. The critical list changes daily based on the mood and brain wave of the administrator. The administrator created a fluid critical vacancy list after dissolving the approved board structure,” Nehawu said.

In response, Carolissen said there were several disciplinary charges underway against several senior managers.

He said there were also criminal investigations into syndicated fraud that were revealed during forensic investigations.

“These allegations keep on surfacing in the media, at the Public Protector and in Parliament, and have yet to gain any traction. However, this is distracting and impugn on the reputation of professionals working hard to restore the integrity and delivery of NSFAS as anticipated in its mandate,” he said.

Carolissen said the circumstances which led to the development of the critical vacancy list and the appointment of the advisors started in October 2018.

“The organisational structure that existed at the commencement of administration was one that included a top-heavy management structure with a shortage of technical skills to address the key strategic risks. This coupled with a limited administration budget, necessitated budget reprioritisation and the establishment of the critical vacancy list to progressively acquire the required technical skills to contribute effectively to the pursuit of NSFAS’ core operational mandate,” he added.

Committee chairperson Philly Mapulane said a follow-up meeting, to further deliberate on the matter, would be held in the coming weeks.

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