THE Special Investigations Unit (SIU) continues to recover more millions from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) from various higher education institutions across Mzansi.
To date, the Nsfas investigation which started in September 2022, the SIU has successfully retrieved more than R937 million in unallocated funds.
According to SIU spokesman Kaizer Kganyago, these unallocated funds were for students who qualified for funding but either changed institutions or deregistered.
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Kganyago said when owing universities were approached by the SIU, they cooperated, which led to a quick recovery process.
Noteworthy among the recovered sums are R400 million from the University of Pretoria, transferred in four installments of R100 million each to the SIU's Trust account.
Other recoveries include R5,057,679 from West Coast College, R33,369,404.97 from NorthLink College, R19,900,174 from Walter Sisulu University, R342,672.50 from Nkangala TVET, R311,892,088.94 from the University of Johannesburg, R58,088,144.65 from the University of Zululand, R25,902,309.31 from Majuba TVET College, and R33,668,138.56 from the University of Mpumalanga.
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According to Kganyago, the SIU investigation has revealed that Nsfas failed to design and implement controls.
He said these controls were meant to ensure that there is an annual reconciliation between the funds disbursed to the institutions and the allocation of those funds to the students.
“These control weaknesses have led to overpayments and underpayments of funds to the different institutions over the period 2017 to date.
“Nsfas has recently appointed a service provider to assist them in performing this reconciliation via a process called 'close-out reporting'. The reconciliation process is still ongoing,” he said.
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