FURY OVER UNSPENT MILLIONS

Oh for goodness sake! How difficult can this be? These are Universities who are in the business of teaching and they can't teach someone the skill of administration and allocation of the NSFAS loans - how comfortable does that make you feel about them teaching anything else!

Come on people, you are always complaining that Government doesn't do enough - well you also have to step up to the plate at some point and do something yourselves.

This is just absolutely crazy!

Fury over unspent millions
Monako Dibetle Johannesburg, South Africa
28 March 2008 07:20


A total of R50-million allocated by the government to universities for loans to poor students went unused last year.Universities now have to return the money -- which could have provided about 1 500 students with the maximum subsidy of R35 000 -- to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).

NSFAS chief executive Pragasen Naicker confirmed this week that from a budget of R1,6-billion allocated for loans last year, about R50-million was unspent. In 2006 about R11-million from a budget of R1,2-billion was returned to NSFAS. The disclosure comes after continuing nationwide student protests against financial exclusions and escalating university fees. Student organisations this week criticised NSFAS and the department of education.

David Maimela, president of the South African Student Congress, said: “We have consistently raised the insufficiency of NSFAS and the inefficiencies of universities to administer the scheme at campus level ... Here again we are proved correct: universities and their poor leadership are a major part of the reason we have had so many student protests since September last year.” He called on NSFAS to tighten its monitoring and visit universities more regularly.

The South African Union of Students’ general secretary, Mbulelo Mandlana, said this “is not only disappointing but disgusting”. The education department, in particular, was to blame, because it continued to ignore students’ demands, he said. Naicker said the key reason for the failure to use the money was universities’ lack of capacity to process the loan funds. Financial aid offices across the country managed NSFAS money and other sources of student funding solicited by an institution, he said.

A contributory factor was that increasing amounts of government money were earmarked for scarce-skills training, including bursaries offered by the Funza Lushaka scheme for teacher training and the social worker training fund. “If a university cannot register a sufficient number of students for these scarce-skills courses, the funds budgeted for the courses will not be drawn down from NSFAS,” he said.

The fund’s provisional quarterly report for the 2007 academic year gives a breakdown of allocations for each university and how much was unspent. The University of Johannesburg, which experienced violent student protests against fee increases last year, recorded the highest unspent funds (just more than R9-million), followed closely by the Vaal University of Technology (also about R9-million). The University of the Witwatersrand failed to spend R7,3-million and Unisa and the University of the Western Cape R4,8-million.

Of a total of 23 government-funded universities, only five managed to use their NSFAS allocations in full. These included the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s Cape Town campus, the Durban University of Technology, the University of Limpopo’s Medunsa campus, Mangosuthu University of Technology and Walter Sisulu University’s Butterworth campus.

Naicker said the unspent money would not be forfeited, but would be drawn back into the NSFAS for future student allocations. At a parliamentary monitoring committee meeting in November last year the NSFAS reported it was expanding its allocations in the next three years to benefit Funza Lushaka, FET colleges and social worker training.

A total of R120-million would be made available to Funza Lushaka, R100-million to FET colleges and R50-million to social workers. Naicker said universities first had to allocate their own funds to assist students before accessing NSFAS funding. “As a result, funding can be used to top up the university’s financial package to the student. Top-up measures normally require a smaller financial commitment from the NSFAS,” he said. Although bursaries given to universities by external donors are preferable to loans, bursary funding is often late, he said. This often happens after NSFAS funding has been provisionally allocated to students, resulting in the return of the remaining funds to the NSFAS.

Universities acknowledged the difficulties they encounter when dealing with allocation of student loans and encouraged students to help them to improve their service.“We do all that we can do to return as little or no money [to NSFAS]. However, this also needs cooperation from students by them meeting NSFAS requirements and deadlines,” said Luthando Tyhalibongo of the University of the Western Cape.