Pretoria – It is believed that service providers such as Coinvest are supposed to be before an independent audit regarding the alleged bribery and corruption case, but such a company is still allowed to continue disbursing, despite the pile of evidence and findings by Afriforum regarding the allegations.
In an effort to raise awareness of the “deteriorating state” of the department of higher education, students at the Tshwane University of Technology will be embarking on a protest “soon”.
This was according to the university’s suspended student representative council (SRC) president, Keamogetswe Masike, who said that this was a result of, among other things, the department’s failure to get rid of third-party financial service providers Coinvest, eZaga Holdings, Tenet Technology, and Noracco Corporation.
This was after the chairperson of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) board, Ernest Khosa, was implicated in a bribery scandal with Coinvest management and the fund announced that Coinvest amongst the other service providers’ contracts would be terminated.
In October last year, an investigation by law firm Werksmans Attorneys and Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC exposed that Nsfas’ former CEO Andile Nongogo hand-picked the four inexperienced service providers to handle the R47 billion fund.
These service providers caused delays in payments for thousands of students, subsequently leading to students voicing their frustrations over the payment system and calling for the Minister of higher education, science and Technology, Blade Nzimande, to suspend the contracts.
In October, Nsfas announced that they had adopted the recommendation to terminate the contracts of all four direct payment service providers.
During the announcement, Khosa, who was detailing the findings of the investigation, noted that the board wrote a letter to Nongogo and gave him a copy of the report. Additionally, they met with the representatives of the four direct payment service providers to bring the content of the report and its implications to their attention.
As a result of the investigation’s findings, Khosa said the board had decided to advise all four direct payment service providers that their contracts would be terminated, adding that these terminations would not affect students.
However, Khosa had not specified the dates of termination.
“As we have indicated, we have already spoken to the direct payment service providers. There’s further room for engagement with them, but all that will be within the law and within the context of the investigators’ recommendation that found their appointment was irregular. Masike said that in February, they were surprised to find out that the allowances were still being disbursed by the same payment service providers.
According to him, there are many challenges students face with this payment method.
“Currently, students are affected in terms of accommodation and transport because they have not been paid their allowances.
TVET students are the most affected. Many of these students are dependent on social grants, and they have to travel to campuses on an empty stomach because this money is what they use to buy food, essentials, and other things they need to survive”.
“Another problem is that a student might want to transact from a particular bank but cannot. Sometimes, around R300 gets debited from their accounts”.
One of these financial service providers, Ezaga Holdings, has defended itself regarding the delayed disbursement of allowances at TUT and the University of Limpopo. In a statement released on 6 April to the students of the two institutions, Ezaga said it was aware of the delay and that the issue lay with Nsfas, not Ezaga.
Meanwhile, the SA Students Congress has urged their constituency to be “prepared to take action and remain militant against all forces that threaten academic excellence.”
President of the organisation, Vezinhlanhla Simelane, said that their committee had been clear that they wanted allowances to be paid directly to students to eliminate the middleman approach.
Thembeka Dliwako, a student at Mnambithi TVET College who has earned the nickname “indlondlo yama rally” (loosely translated to “rally queen”), has also taken to her Facebook page to express the financial frustrations students are going through.
In her post, Dliwako explains that she is not protesting “normally” because of the issues they are facing as TVET students. She says that they leave home to go study so that they can make their parents proud, but the problems they are facing with Nsfas are inexplicable.
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