NSFAS Faces Challenges With Payment Of Student Allowances as its unable to pay student due to some reasons that will be explained as you read on.
With the country’s economic challenges impacting citizens’ wallets, student financial aid schemes like the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) are critical to easing the burden on students struggling to cope with the rising costs of living.
Clement Manyathela speaks to the CEO of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) about some of the challenges that the student beneficiaries face and how they are planning on resolving them.
NSFAS has had its fair share of troubles when it comes to the smooth operation of the student financial aid scheme. Despite having a messy start that hopes to be soon resolved.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is already expecting to face a number of challenges during this new academic year.
The most prominent issue the financial aid provider is trying to resolve lies with the distribution of allowances to students funded by the bursary scheme.
The problems NSFAS are facing were brought up during a recent Parliamentary Committee Meeting, where the key challenges and risks that are associated with the current methods of payment NSFAS uses.
The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), South Africa’s Parliamentary Committee, and various other stakeholders were all in attendance to assess and discuss the state of readiness for the upcoming academic year, as well as what issues are currently at hand.
According to the meeting’s report, “the current methods require mainly the use of beneficiaries’ personal information and contact details to function, and as such, beneficiaries were targeted due to the many available and unlawful ways to obtain such information.”
READ ALSO: NSFAS Mastercard Will Soon Replace NSFAS Wallet
Therefore, the following challenges were highlighted:
- Unauthorized access to beneficiaries’ allowance and the soliciting of beneficiaries by fraudsters through social media and malicious websites.
- Insufficient cyber security on the web platforms NSFAS makes use of, resulting in exposed beneficiary data and theft of their allowances.
- Lack of physical variation leads to paying allowances to beneficiaries that don’t exist.
- Beneficiary information was too easily accessed by NSFAS agents who handle the allowance queries, which meant the possibility of theft increased.
A number of solutions were discussed by those in attendance at the meeting, to resolve some of the challenges that NSFAS, as well as its beneficiaries, are experiencing.
Some of these solutions include:
- Streamlining the process of allowance payments so that it comes directly from NSFAS in order to ensure that payments are received on time by eliminating third-party dependencies.
- Increasing the number of funds paid out to cater to the growing number of NSFAS beneficiaries, as well as monitoring the spending of those allowances in order to identify areas that may require financial awareness initiatives.
- Promoting financial responsibility.
- Partnering with four service providers in the financial services sector as a supply chain in order to provide a bank account where the funds will be disbursed into you.
For more information about NSFAS, Visit the NSFAS wesbite via: www.nsfas.org.za
See Also: How to Create myNSFAS Account
