NSFAS PAYS ALLOWANCES TO OVER 600 000 STUDENTS

BY STAFF REPORTER
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has disbursed allowances to 623, 386 students.
Minister of higher education, Blade Nzimande said the number of students assessed as eligible for the 2021 programme cycle is 1 286 867, with the total allocated for the university sector being 939 934 students and 346 933 students for the TVET Colleges.
These include new and continuing students.
Nzimande thanked the NSFAS board for taking a resolution to regularly and continuously update its stakeholders through the issuing of status reports on the number of issues affecting institutions and students.
“Amongst these reports is the 2021 Funding Status report. This report was published on the NSFAS website and all Institutions and students can download the report for easy reference. However, there are few issues I would like to highlight on this report today.
“This number represents at least 48.5% of the total number of overall eligible students.
The number is likely to increase as a result of the TVETs Term 2 intake, Semester 2 (TVETs and universities ) as well as the Term 3,” Nzimande said.
He said a further increase was expected from the outcome of data remediation processes conducted by NSFAS.
“Because of the fact that not all eligible students may not eventually secure a space at an institution of higher learning, according to the data received for the 2021 academic year, 47% (444,609) of funding eligible university students have confirmed registration at institutions and this is evidenced through registration data submitted and processed by NSFAS.
It is however, important to highlight that among these 444,609 at least 2% will not have their NSFAS funding confirmed as they fall within the category of registration data non-conformities/exceptions (ie these students are found to be non-compliant based on the information received),” Nzimande said.
He said there has been two payments made to universities since start of the academic year.
The first payment was made on April 9 as NSFAS paid and advance amount of approximately R7,9bn to cover March and April allowances to students at universities and 2nd payment was made on June 10.
Nzimande said a further R6.9bn was paid over after a reconciliation was affected based on the value of registration data received.
“The payment was made to cover the months of May, June and July.
Nzimande said there were 44 TVET colleges whose allowances were paid directly to the students through the NSFAS Wallet platform.
“NSFAS has been able to make payments to 183 422 students. There are 20,950 students who for various reasons still need to resolve outstanding requirements for their allowances to be approved.
These students are in exceptions which largely consists of 13, 276 that were initially incorrectly funded and had subsequently been resolved,” he said.
Nzimande said there was an automated email that is sent twice a week to notify colleges of students who do not have a user profile which is critical in the disbursement process as it ensures that students have a unique cell phone number.
Nzimande said NSFAS was addressing all the non-compliance challenges.
“NSFAS has also instituted ongoing investigations into syndicates that exist to defraud students of their allowances.
There are 20 991 students who have not created user profiles on the myNSFAS student portal.
This is the biggest challenge confronting NSFAS which contributes largely to the NSFAS wallet payment failures.
I therefore call upon students who have not created myNSFAS portal to do so to receive their allowances,” he said.
He said there were 180 293 students whom NSFAS attempted to pay using the NSFAS wallet system, 6 681 of which could not be paid because of locked accounts (which means student may have forgotten their pins) and 336 have blocked accounts, meaning there was a failed attempt to unlock the accounts.