House Chair, when the former Chairperson of NSFAS Nxasana was released from his duties, there was an allegation that there is continuous breakdown of the Information Technology System, IT, when we saw a lot of students dropping out as a result of receiving their allowances late. The department and the Minister went on and appointed an administrator with the hope that things would change.
2017, 2018, 2019 and this year, things remained the same. As I talk to you right now there are so many students, both in universities and TVET colleges who have not received their allowances, not only book allowances but including accommodation allowances. We see many of these private landlords evicting these students.
We want to check what the necessity of appointing an administrator was if the IT system remains the same and we are of the view that - perhaps you can advise the House if the IT system was ever changed since the one they were using with Nxasana.
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF HIGHER EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY: House Chair, I can confirm that the problems which we experienced in the academic year 2017/2018 which was the first year of the introduction of the fee free higher education. Those challenges were not experienced immediately after the appointment of the administrator which was - and the administrators now in his second year. Yes, there have been challenges and those challenges mainly relate in instances where we have seen students coming out saying that they have not received their allowances.
Those instances are when the NSFAS paid directly to the college or the university and expect that the college or university will dispense the allowance to students. That is where we mainly or predominantly experience problems. The NSFAS is doing its best to ensure that we migrate from paying the allowances to the institutions into paying the allowances directly to the pockets of the students. There will be challenges when it comes to that.
In fact, the fraud committed in the past at the NSFAS which is something that is being pursued has been because of the fact that payment was linked to people's cell phones. That has been cleaned up as a result of the new IT system that has been introduced by the NSFAS. I must in a nutshell, yes there are still challenges but I do not think that we should exaggerate the extent of the challenges we have experienced with regards to the disbursement of allowances to students. We have done much, much better in for the last two years. Thank you.