NSFAF lost data while relocating – Minister

HIGHER education minister Itah Kandjii-Murangi yesterday said the beleaguered Namibian Students’ Financial Assistance Fund could have lost data files while relocating to the new premises.

The NSFAF has been in the media recently for failing to account for billions as well as losing documents with student debtors’ information.

Addressing a press conference in Windhoek, Kandjii-Murangi said:

“It is natural with any type of relocating, [that] certain things may happen that are not advantageous.”

Despite claiming that no stone will be left unturned to bring non-paying loan recipients to book, Kandjii-Murangi could not shed light on how much is outstanding, although NSFAF boss Hilya Nghiwete told recently that N$400 million is outstanding.Kandjii-Murangi conceded, just as did Nghiwete, that it is proving to be a mammoth task to trace employed former recipients of the fund.”

”The outstanding amount is a huge amount. NSFAF is finding it difficult to trace the graduates,” she stated.

Kandjii-Murangi said one way of tracing debtors is to check with the finance ministry to find out if they are paying tax.

She also said the demand for funding outweighs the availability of money provided annually by the national fiscus by far.

According to the minister, if no commitment is shown towards helping needy students, government ”will retard and derail the nation from realising its goals of skills development, job-creation, poverty reduction and becoming a competitive nation”.

But she warned that students have to pass in order to continue to benefit from the fund.

This year, government made N$1,2 billion available for loans.

Nghiwete was earlier adamant that the NSFAF can account for all its money.

Referring to a damning report by auditor general Junias Kandjeke, she said: “People need to understand that statement within auditing standards. Records for students were incomplete and in terms of auditing, if you cannot trace a payment from A to Z, you cannot express an [unqualified] opinion. That does not mean money is not accounted for.”

Maintaining her stance, she said: “I can confidently say that there is no money missing; it is just the records that were only partly-kept, and the AG was unable to express an opinion.”

The main burden which is still haunting the NSFAF to this day, Nghiwete said, is that there was ‘no aggressive recovery strategy’ in place when the institution was established to make sure that they collected payment from loan students.

At its inception in January 1997, it only had three divisions.

These were an award unit, a payment unit and a recovery unit.

According to her, the recoveries unit was doomed from the start because it had no means of tracking down former beneficiaries if their contact and residential details changed from what it was at the time they were studying.