SIU recovers R1bn owed to Nsfas by varsities

The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has now recovered almost R1 billion from institutions of higher learning, as part of its ongoing investigations into the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas).

President Cyril Ramaphosa in August last year authorised the unit to investigate allegations of corruption and maladministration at the scheme.

The SIU revealed there was R400 million that still needed to be recovered from the University of Pretoria (UP) and just above R311 million from the University of Johannesburg (UJ).

According to the SIU, UP paid the money into its trust account in four instalments of R100 million. These are unallocated funds from 2016 to 2021.

The money is for students who qualified for funding but either changed institutions or deregistered.

While the funds should stay in the possession of the institution for just a year, UP had been sitting with them for years due to Nsfas’ poor control systems and a lack of reconciliation processes.

“These control weaknesses have led to overpayments and underpayments of funds to the different institutions over the period 2017 to date,” the unit said.

When approached by the SIU, the institutions cooperated, it said.

Other institutions that still have Nsfas funds are:

West Coast College (R5 million)

NorthLink College (R33 million);

Walter Sisulu University (R19 million);

Nkangala Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) College (R342 672); UJ (R311 million); University of Zululand

(R58 million);

UP (R400 million);

Majuba TVET College

(R25 million); and

University of Mpumalanga (R33 million).

The SIU has signed an acknowledgement of the debt agreement of R38.7 million with Motheo TVET College in the Free State.

It also signed agreements worth R10.9 million with parents and students who did not meet the Nsfas funding criteria.

The investigation further uncovered that Celbux, the e-wallet/voucher payment system, had many dormant accounts on the system dating back to 2018 amounting to an estimated R320 million.

In responses to the weaknesses in recovering unallocated funds, Nsfas has since appointed a service provider to assist them.