Please find attached English and Afrikaans soundbites by Dr Delmaine Christians MP.
Today’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training exposed an untenable situation at the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS): service providers were irregularly procured to perform essential functions, yet NSFAS now says it cannot terminate these agreements because it lacks the internal capacity to perform those very functions itself.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will launch a parliamentary probe to secure access to the legal review provided to NSFAS, to examine how these irregular procurements were allowed to continue, and to ensure that those responsible are held accountable where appropriate. Parliament must now provide the scrutiny and accountability that the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Buti Manamela, should already have been driving.
During today’s meeting, NSFAS disclosed that, despite procurement irregularities identified in a legal review of its previously procured student accommodation Solution Partners, the agreements remain in force because NSFAS lacks the capacity to handle these functions internally.
Even more extraordinary, despite NSFAS saying it referred these irregularities to the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) for investigation, it was legally advised that the agreements remain in place because NSFAS cannot successfully take over the tasks it has outsourced to these Solution Partners.
It is critical that Parliament receive the legal review provided to NSFAS so the Portfolio Committee can properly interrogate its findings against the concerned Solution Partners.
Where evidence indicates possible criminal conduct or contraventions that warrant criminal investigation, the matter must be referred to the appropriate law-enforcement authorities. Any person found to have unlawfully abused public funds must face the full consequences provided for in law.
Additionally, today’s meeting raised serious questions about why NSFAS continues to rely on external intermediaries to perform functions that should fall within its internal capacity.
During the Committee’s previous oversight visit to NSFAS, we encountered an institution with its own ICT and human-resources capacity. It must therefore be explained why, after years of spending on consultants, service providers, and outsourced systems, NSFAS remains unable to perform critical functions internally.
In questioning Minister Buti Manamela, the DA challenged NSFAS’s continued dependence on intermediaries and urged a shift to a decentralised funding model that places institutions closer to students and their funding.
Significantly, the Minister agreed with the DA’s concern about the damaging role that middlemen can play in the system.
The question facing Minister Manamela is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid: if government itself accepts that the proliferation of middlemen is part of the problem, what exactly is holding back structural reform of NSFAS?