By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has appointed a private forensic company to conduct a full-scale forensic investigation into financial affairs at National Skills Fund (NSF).
The National Skills Fund, which was set up to fund skill development projects, is under investigation after the auditor-general found several financial irregularities, including R5 billion that couldn’t be accounted for.
Nzimande also appointed a ministerial task team to review the entity’s operations.
“The review includes the mandate, policy scope and analysis of NSF capacity, systems, and organisational modelling in relation to its mandate as a Schedule 3A skills levy entity,” Nzimande’s spokesperson Ishmael Mnisi said in a statement.
The task team held over numerous stakeholder engagements from August 2021 through to December 2021, ranging from the NSF itself, related government departments, labour entities, and business and fund beneficiaries, also conducting in loco inspections across the country in the sites in which NSF funded skills development projects.
Meanwhile Nzimande has defended his decision to hire private forensic investigators to get to the bottom of the rot at one of his department’s key entities, saying the move could not be viewed as disrespectful to parliament.
Parliament’s public finance watchdog, the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), had pushed for the probe into the financial irregularities at the National Skills Fund (NSF) to be led by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) — the state’s corruption-fighting investigating body.
The NSF is a Schedule 3A public entity that provides funding for skills development initiatives that are identified by the National Skills Development Plan 2030 (NSDP) as national priorities, and/or are related to the achievement of the SDA, 1998 and/or considered to be an activity undertaken by the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation to achieve a standard of good practice in terms of skills development.