As the academic year begins, 36,170 student beds in universities and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges will still need to be accredited by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
This was disclosed by NSFAS acting chief executive, Mr Masile Ramolwesi, in a briefing to Parliament's Higher Education Portfolio Committee.
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“A total of 77,331 beds are registered at the university, 49,411 beds are certified and available to registered students funded by NSFAS, while 27,920 beds are yet to be certified,” Ramolwesi told parliament.
“For TVET, out of a total of 40,522 registered beds, 32,272 beds are accredited and available to registered NSFAS-funded students, while 8,250 beds are yet to be accredited.”
He said NSFAS had appointed four “solution partners” to assist with student accommodation.
He said 39 “authorized agents” were appointed in May to assist with property inspections. He also said a special committee has been set up to assist the board with student accommodation.
On Monday (February 12), GroundUp reported that Cape Peninsula University of Technology students have been struggling to find accommodation since January 31, sleeping in a multi-purpose hall without mattresses or other furniture. Reported.
Read: Student Financial Aid Limits Risk in Growthpoint Portfolios
DA MP Chantel King raised this with NSFAS, questioning its ability to certify beds more quickly.
In response, Ramolwesi acknowledged that there were “challenges” with production capacity.
He pointed to problems with registration verification, an influx of accommodation providers requiring immediate inspection and grading, and a backlog of registered and certified accommodation providers into the system.
reverse audit
Ignatius Fourie, senior manager at the Office of the Auditor-General, told MPs that NSFAS had set back from the previous year by receiving an adverse audit opinion in the 2021/22 financial year. NSFAS has been under qualified audit for the past four years.
The Auditor General's report said the “root cause” of the adverse finding was that the organization's capabilities and systems were inadequate to manage and sustain the growth NSFAS has experienced since 2018. Says.
“Despite a number of internal control deficiencies identified in recent years, NSFAS functions and responsibilities continue to evolve and expand in a haphazard manner, with weaknesses in systems, controls and human resources not adequately addressed. attempts to stabilize the organization were not sufficient.
“In summary, given its starting point, NSFAS was not prepared to deliver substantial social benefits to so many students in such a short period of time,” the report said.
Mr Foley told MPs: “An adverse audit means there are a number of material misstatements in the financial statements and the numbers in the financial statements cannot be relied upon.”
Speaking on the audit of the financial statements, Mr Foley said the negative opinion on the 2021/22 financial statements was due to material and pervasive misstatements that were not identified and corrected during the audit.
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“When it came to reconciliation, there was a lot of data that was unsupported and couldn't be audited. There were also errors in the calculations,” Hooley said.
He said he had given NSFAS another opportunity to correct errors and mistakes in the Closed Project (COP).
“The annual financial statements were filed with our office in March 2023. We audited these revised results and COPs and there were still significant findings. We published the book in July 2023, one year later than required by law,” Hooley said.
Speaking about the adequacy of NSFAS' systems, Mr Fourie said the financial aid scheme remained “heavily reliant on error-prone manual systems and processes”.
NSFAS Acting Chair Professor Laurens van Staden acknowledged the capacity issue. “[This] This is not due to incompetence, but rather to the high number of vacancies in the management team. “Some executives handle multiple portfolios,” he said.
He said a turnaround strategy had been “conceptualised”.
He said the company has three “turnaround specialists” to assist the board.
Application accepted
Meanwhile, Mr Ramolwesi said as of February 12, NSFAS had received 1,904,209 applications.
Of these, 989,998 are provisionally funded, 369,320 are awaiting evaluation, 72,574 have been withdrawn by students, 161,492 are in progress, and 139,928 applications are inactive beyond the applicant creating a profile. It is in “Not Started” status because it is not. We submitted applications, but 14 198 were rejected. GroundUp doesn't understand why these numbers don't add up.
Applications closed on Thursday (February 15th).
© 2024 GroundUp. This article was originally published here.
