In today’s NSFAS News – The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has announced that it will investigate maladministration at the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to determine if the government has been defrauded.

The SIU’s primary objective is to recover any fiscal losses that NSFAS has incurred, as well as finding out whether any fraudulent activity has been carried out by Nsfas officials.

Blade Nzimande, Higher Education and Training Minister, insisted that government should not permit Nsfas funding to be abused and recalled the fact that some children of hugely successful government officials were receiving Nsfas funding when they shouldn’t have, earlier last year.

The Training Minister’s accusations raised many eyebrows as people were asking how these children are receiving Nsfas funding yet they are not qualify.

Speaking in an interview, Andile Nongogo, the CEO of NSFAS said that In the past, there was no means of verification with third parties when it came to the household income requirements and NSFAS relied on payslips and affidavits instead.

This is where the undue funding would come through.

The Minister says a number of people lied about their household income levels. He says that Nsfas has since put mechanisms in place that allows them to verify the information provided by applicants against data from SARS and found around 38 000 Nsfas beneficiaries amounting to R2.4 billion that shouldn’t have been funded.

Nongogo says that when Nsfas pays TVET college student allowances, a wallet system is used and for this to be loaded an official has to enter the student’s phone number in order to pay them as this is where irregularities were found.

Students have presented documents to prove how some officials are stealing Nsfas money, especially those students who were shortlisted for TVET college.

Some officials were loading their own phone numbers instead of the students.