Increased verification measures will be put in place to avoid paying “ghost students” when higher education institutions take over the direct payment of student allowances from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
As of March 1, more than 1.9 million applications had been received and 1.2 million students provisionally funded, according to the entity.
More than 59 000 students were not yet funded due to evaluations, according to acting NSFAS board chairperson Professor Lourens van Staden. They were also waiting for 94 000 students to provide supporting documents.
About 240 000 bursary applications were rejected and 15 174 have lodged appeals so far.
NSFAS acting CFO Che Muller said to avoid paying “ghost students” they had various processes where students are being verified.
“When a student applies to NSFAS the validation process includes working with other government agencies, such as the Department of Home Affairs and Sars, and also matching information from institutions against what the students have sent. The direct payment channel assists. In order for a student to receive payment they have to physically verify themselves in a banking process known as ‘know your client’, so we have multiple processes now. It would be difficult and require considerable collusion for such incidents of paying students that are not entitled,” said Muller.
The Special Investigating Unit has been conducting probes into ghost students and other corruption matters.
Van Staden said the board took a decision to request institutions to in the interim operate as a channel to pay the February and March allowances.
“Communication was therefore sent to all universities notifying them of this decision. We also sent another communication to indicate the 2024 academic year allowances type distribution channel. Financial aid managers were asked to confirm the universities’ allowances payment commitment dates.
“For TVET colleges, we will be paying through the direct payment channel.
The 29 institutions that have submitted registration data will be paid by Friday this week at the latest. We encourage all other institutions to submit registration data to enable NSFAS to make a catch-up payment,” said Van Staden.
He said two upfront payments to all institutions had been made in order for allowances, including book allowance, accommodation and medical students, to be distributed and the majority of institutions committed to paying students from the last week of February.
For universities, NSFAS disbursed R2.8 billion in January. This disbursement does not include the calculation of the tranche payments, which the scheme will disburse at the beginning of April.
“This upfront payment covers one month of student accommodation and the book allowance. The book allowance is calculated at half the total cost, while the accommodation is calculated as one month of the accommodation cost. For TVET colleges, a total of R580 150 950 was paid to colleges as tuition upfront in January,” Van Staden said.
An additional R1bn was earmarked for three months worth of allowances to be paid based on registration from the January to March period, he said.
This comes after Department of Higher Education and Training director-general Nkosinathi Sishi recently said the entity was dealing with the contract termination of the controversial fintech companies – Tenet Technology, eZaga Holdings, Noracco Corporation and Coinvest Africa.
A Werksmans Attorneys report found there seemed to have been a conflict of interest in the appointment of the four. It was also reported that there was an amendment to the bid specification to include fintechs, which resulted in changes in the mandatory requirements of the original bid.
Cape Times