The University of Pretoria (UP) has paid R400 million that is due to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) in unallocated funds.
The money was paid in four instalments into the Special Investigating Unit’s (SIU) Trust account, bringing the total number of recoveries to R937 926 351 received from institutions of higher learning since the inception of the SIU’s NSFAS investigation in September 2022.
The monies paid by UP are unallocated funds from 2016 to 2021, for students who qualified for funding, but either changed institutions or deregistered.
The funds stay in the possession of the institution for a year.
The unallocated funds are due to poor control systems and a lack of reconciliation processes by the NSFAS.
The SIU investigation has revealed that the NSFAS failed to design and implement controls to ensure that there is an annual reconciliation between the funds disbursed to the institutions and the allocation of those funds to the students. This led to overpayments and underpayments of funds over the period 2017 to date.
A service provider was appointed to assist the NSFAS in performing this reconciliation via a process called “close-out reporting”.
The process is ongoing.
