Johannesburg - The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) on Wednesday said it was expecting a report from the Walter Sisulu University after a NSFAS student accidentally received a R14 million allowance.
It was earlier reported that WSU student was living lavishly after accidentally receiving R14 million into her IntelliCard account.
The mix-up went virtually undetected for five months until media posts brought the matter to light, prompting the university to investigate the matter.
It then emerged that the student spent close to R1 million before the error was picked up and the card blocked by the institution.
Michael Ansell, chief executive of IntelliMali – which manages the allocation of funds at the Walter Sisulu University's (WSU) student’s IntelliCard – then confirmed that they were taking legal action against the student who had “helped herself” to the money.
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NSFAS in a statement confirmed it was aware of the incident but clarified that it was not involved in the administration of funds.
"NSFAS has not paid R14 million to a student. NSFAS paid WSU its total budget for it to disburse allowances to its own NSFAS funded students.
"The university does this using its own processes, systems and service providers, without the involvement of NSFAS."
— NSFAS (@myNSFAS) August 30, 2017
This therefore meant that when mistakes occurred, the university bore the responsibility of fixing them, NSFAS said.
The student funding scheme reiterated that it was in no way involved in this particular incident, except to request an official report from on the matter.
"NSFAS has made a request to the university for such a report," the company confirmed.