Bid to fine-tune NSF gathers pace
Task team calls for sweeping reforms
The embattled National Skills Fund (NSF) is set for a major overhaul if the recommendations of the ministerial task team (MTT) on the review of the entity are implemented to a tee.
The task team was appointed a year ago by Higher Education, Science and Innovation Minister Blade Nzimande with a mandate to review the business model of the NSF with the view of introducing and implementing a new long-term transformational business model for the NSF.
“I expect that the MTT recommendations will clearly outline the strategic role and optimal future functional business model to enable NSF’S catalytic contribution to skills development and innovation in the country considering the revolutionary changing nature of work and change of dynamic between the world of training and the world of work,” said Nzimande earlier this year.
On governance, the MTT has made the following recommendations:
• The NSF should be formalised as a separate legal entity.
• The governance of the fund should be initially delegated by the director-general of the DHET to a board appointed for this purpose.
• The board should have a majority of stakeholder representatives together with public sector appointees.
• The board should establish appropriate governance and advisory committees that enable participation and involvement of stakeholders.
• The board should appoint a permanent CEO who, together with the board, would need to make the necessary executive appointments for the fund.
• In the longer term, the accounting authority should be transitioned from the director-general, but this would require legislation changes.
The MTT goes on further to recommend a plethora of recommendations on the administration function of the NSF. The task team has told the government that the support functions of the NSF should be independently established within the new legal entity, with the responsibility for the support functions such as human resources, information systems and technology and finance included.
The task team also recommends that the overlapping roles between the National Skills Authority and the NSF should be shifted to the NSF “after due consideration on the implications of same has been undertaken”.
“The foregoing recommendations are informed by the urgent need for the NSF to be repositioned to effectively play its mandated role of supporting national priorities. The recommended organisational and governance structures are informed by the areas that legislation and policy direct the NSF to focus on as well as by lessons from domestic and international
benchmarking.
However, in what resembled what transpired at standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) last week, legislators sent the department packing for not giving it the full MTT report. Scopa’s gripe was on the lack of release of full-scale forensic investigation into possible maladministration and corruption at the NSF.THE investigation was ordered after an auditor-general’s report found that
nearly R5bn could not be accounted for over two years.
The portfolio committee said it had expected MTT review on the NSF; the forensic investigation report into NSF; an update on the implementation of the NSF audit action plan and the MTT on funding of the post-school education and training sector.
Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, the chairperson of the portfolio committee on higher edu
cation, science and innovation, said it was unacceptable for the department to just provide summaries of the reports and ordered it to submit the actual report on student funding immediately.
Mkhatshwa also ordered the department to submit the forensic report into NSF by Tuesday and to make a presentation in the first week of parliament’s last term of the year, which starts on October 11.