The board of directors of Universities South Africa (USAf) has welcomed the anticipated action against National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) staff associated with wrongdoing and the termination of contracts of the direct payment service providers.
This comes as higher education stakeholders are watching with interest whether the NSFAS board will take any further action against its CEO, Andile Nongogo, as the Werksmans Attorneys report has recommended.
NSFAS board chairperson Ernest Khosa was initially defensive about Nongogo, who has been placed on special leave since August.
“I want to emphasise this point, in our books, he (Nongogo) has not been found guilty of anything,” said Khosa.
He made the remarks in September before Parliament’s portfolio committee for higher education.
However, Khosa indicated last week that Nongogo was expected to be given until end of business on Monday to defend his position by giving reasons why he should not be fired.
This as he faces allegations of hand-picking the four fintech companies – Coinvest Africa, eZaga Holdings,Tenet Technology and Norraco Corporation – appointed to directly disburse the R47-billion fund meant to go towards student allowances.
Khosa said they would “subject NSFAS staff associated with wrongdoing to a disciplinary enquiry and will terminate the contracts of the direct payment service providers”.
The report by legal heavyweights advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC and Sandile July from Werksmans Attorneys recommended that Nongogo be sacked due to his alleged conduct.
“Not only has he been grossly derelict in his duties, but we have also found some of his responses to us to be less than candid. We believe that the NSFAS board should terminate his contract of employment for breach of trust,” the report read.
The attorneys further recommended that NSFAS should subject all the bid evaluation committee members who are still within the employ of NSFAS to a disciplinary inquiry for their failure and deliberate neglect of their duty to conduct bid evaluations as prescribed in the 2021 supply chain management policy.
The board of directors of Universities South Africa (USAf) welcomed the decisions Khosa said would be implemented.
USAf CEO Phethiwe Matutu said: “It is only prudent to terminate the services of the four companies, given NSFAS’s prior negligence to undertake due diligence on them and to establish their fitness for purpose. The USAf board is watching with interest, the outcome of the processes concerning the NSFAS CEO and the disciplinary enquiry pertaining to staff involved in wrongdoing. Of concern are the policies and systems in and outside the NSFAS, which enabled wrongdoing to occur.”
Matutu said they hoped that these due processes would be expedited so that the disbursement of funds to students was restored to normalcy.
She noted that some students were still suffering the consequences of NSFAS service providers’ “inefficiencies”.
Cape Times