People who have been reported dead by Home Affairs are being recorded as trained, or as having completed their training, by the entities that spend the skills levy.
The Auditor-General put this to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education on Friday, 2 October. It is the second year running that it has made the finding.
“We still have issues where learners who are reported as deceased by Home Affairs are reported as trained or completing interventions by the entities. So it highlights the need for that integrated system again,” AGSA said.
According to AGSA the money was also going to the same people twice, while others got nothing.
“We’re still highlighting similar issues as we reported in the previous year in terms of the leakages, the duplication of funding across SETAs and NSFAS. Which means funds that could have been used to fund a bigger pool of beneficiaries is now limited to a few beneficiaries, which then also limits the impact of the interventions,” AGSA reported.
Committee chairperson Tebogo Letsie later put the numbers behind the finding, reading from the Auditor-General’s slides.
“The AG talks about the duplicate funding and the reliability of the learner data in slide 24, 39 and 40, where the AG says more than 11,000 learners funded by SETAs and NSFAS. 2,274 students funded by both of them at colleges. 80 of them deceased individuals in the SETA records. 286 deceased at their colleges. And 45,000 students at multiple colleges,”
He said the state was probably paying twice for the same person.
“Because 45,000 are at multiple colleges, that might mean some unsuspecting SETA has been paying for the same person at two different colleges. So you can only imagine where the other money goes to,” Letsie said.
The system meant to stop all of this is the integrated learner management system. AGSA said it is built but barely used.
“Our main concern then is in relation to the implementation of the integrated learner management system. We are urging that focus should be given to that system, because it is one of the solutions that are much needed by the portfolio,” AGSA said.
AGSA said that only three entities were on it.
“The development is quite advanced, but the implementation and the on-boarding of the other entities is a bit behind, because at the time of our review only three entities were participating in the pilot phase,” AGSA explained.
Letsie told the Minister that gentle pressure was not working.
“I know, Minister, you’ve responded to this matter, but you are nudging them. We must not nudge them. We must push them. There’s this thing of nudging. It sounds soft. We must push them.
“It’s extremely important that we don’t nudge them towards this ILMS system, Minister. We need to push them very hard. We must use force,” Letsie said.
He also put the wider SETA and National Skills Fund findings to the Minister.
“At the SETAs and NSF, the AG finds weak project management or project monitoring, grants being paid for a project that was never implemented, large upfront payments and weak consequence management,” he said.
“What can the Minister say to reassure the people of South Africa that we are doing something as far as this is concerned? Because there are now people who just come out and say close the SETAs, close the NSF, close the NSFAS, because of how uncoordinated the messaging is around these things,” he asked.
Manamela did not answer the figures. He spoke instead about changing how the money is paid out.
“The key discussion we’re having now is something called outcomes-based finance, wherein funding follows a certain set of outcomes and results,” he said.
“It’s a model which we’re looking at in terms of the National Skills Fund, and of course it has to apply across the funding spectrum.”
He said the discussion had to include small training providers.
“We also have to have a discussion, and maybe that discussion must include Parliament, it must include the AG, for us to listen to the training providers who are startups, who are small, micro, medium enterprises, who have not established the base, but who have year in, year out continued to deliver,” he said.
He said the principle was not in dispute.
“What we fundamentally agree on is that every rand and cent that is spent from the skills levy, and broadly from this portfolio, has to lead to some form of set of results, outcomes, and those outcomes have to include employment,” he said.
He said the findings upset him.
“It’s quite angering, actually, when you hear some of the points that the AG has raised, some of the points that you yourself and the portfolio committee members have raised, where money cannot be accounted for, and those become the dominant stories. We are aware of the risk, and I think we have to put in measures to minimise that,” he said.
The Auditor-General also told the committee that some SETAs were paying out large sums before anyone had been signed up.
“More than 40% of the contract value is paid upfront, just based on a contract and quotations, and no evidence that there are learners that have been recruited. Such practices should be discouraged, because SETAs are not meant to be focusing on disbursing funds. Any amount that is disbursed should be supported by clear evidence that there is a learner behind every invoice,” AGSA said.
According to AGSA the learners also disappeared after the first payment.
“While the first payment will be made based on learners who have been recruited, six months down the line the contracts are either terminated, others are extended,” she said.
“But what then becomes a question is what happened to the learners who were recruited? Because payments would have been made with an indication that learners have entered,” said AGSA.
NSFAS paying students recorded as dead has been reported before. In March, the Auditor-General’s findings showed NSFAS had funded 822 students recorded as deceased, and in August it was reported that about 40,000 students had been improperly funded.
The SETA and college figures Letsie read out on Friday have not been reported.
Africa Daily has sent questions to the department, the SETAs and the National Skills Fund.
