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In an effort to address lingering concerns over unpaid student accommodation allowances, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is set to host a series of roadshows across South Africa. NSFAS Administrator Freeman Nomvalo announced that the initiative will begin in KwaZulu-Natal on August 7, 2024, aiming to engage directly with affected landlords.
Despite NSFAS disbursing R1 billion for private student accommodation as of July 31, 2024, many landlords remain unsatisfied due to delays in payments. The roadshows are a critical step toward ensuring timely disbursements, which Nomvalo identified as the primary concern among accommodation providers.
The Administrator emphasized the collaborative nature of the roadshows, extending invitations to university representatives and the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector, to collectively address and resolve the issues faced by both students and landlords.
In addition to addressing immediate payment issues, Nomvalo highlighted NSFAS’s ongoing projects aimed at stabilizing the organization and improving its operational efficiency. These include the Organisational Re-engineering and Re-alignment Project and the ICT and Business Processing Review Project, which are expected to enhance NSFAS’s resource allocation model and ICT systems for better management of student bursaries, loans, and appeals.
The roadshows also aim to explore different regionalization models to make NSFAS more accessible to its stakeholders, considering the geographical locations of beneficiaries and the operational feasibility.
Furthermore, Nomvalo discussed steps being taken to address alleged procurement irregularities and capacity challenges within NSFAS’s Procurement Unit. Collaboration with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) and the National Treasury is part of these efforts, including a potential six-month secondment from the Treasury to assist in reviewing procurement policies and processes.
To promote transparency and compliance with the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), NSFAS will implement new registers for irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditures during the 2024/25 financial year.