Billions paid out to students in error, admits NSFAS

NSFAS administrator Dr Randall Carolissen says it will likely only recover R1 billion of R7 billion in irregular expenditure.

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme says it will be able to fund students for the 2020 academic year despite incurring R7 billions in irregular expenditure.

NSFAS administrator Dr Randall Carolissen told Parliament this week that incorrect payments to students had increased by more than 300% between 2017 and this year.

Speaking to Refilwe Moloto, Dr Carolissen says this will not impact on their ability to fund students.

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In our investigations, we found that R7 billion was accounted for irregular expenditure and we are determining how much of that can be recovered.

Dr Randall Carolissen, Administrator - NSFAS

The recoverability of that R7 billion we estimate it to be R1 billion and we have begun to recover. So far we have recovered R350,000 million from universities.

Dr Randall Carolissen, Administrator - NSFAS

Getting money back from people who are not yet working is a challenge, Dr Carolissen adds.

The R1 billion is where we think we are going to have a tough time getting it back.

Dr Randall Carolissen, Administrator - NSFAS

A large part of that money was paid out to students in error as their allowance.

Dr Randall Carolissen, Administrator - NSFAS

Carolissen admits that staff members accessed the system off-site and authorised payments. He says security has been tightened up.

Listen to the full interview:

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