The Standing Committee on Public Accounts in Namibia has criticised Kennedy Kandume, the acting CEO of the Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund, for his inability to provide satisfactory answers to their questions and produce a complete loan book as requested.
Kandume and other managers appeared before the parliamentary standing committee on public accounts yesterday.
However, Kandume failed to account for N$77 million and the committee expressed their concerns about his evasiveness.
During the meeting, Kandume reported that N$300 million had been paid out as student loans and grants between 2003 and 2013, and approximately N$220 million had been recovered.
He admitted the remaining N$77 million still cannot be accounted for. Additionally, the fund has no records of how N$1.7 billion in student loans and grants were spent.
Kandume explained the lack of a proper data capture system contributed to the fund’s inability to account for the millions.
He stated that af ter the implementation of a data integration system, approximately N$220 million had been successfully recovered. However, he did not provide details on how the remaining N$77 million would be recovered.
The committee expressed dissatisfaction with Kandume’s responses regarding the strategies the fund intends to employ for recovering the missing millions.
The committee had previously requested the fund to provide a loan book during a public hearing in November 2021.
“This is what we call a loan book. However, the complete loan book will be submitted in March 2023,” he convinced the committee.
However, Kandume only provided a list of beneficiaries for 2020-2022, failing to meet the committee’s expectations. He argued that this list was equivalent to the loan book referenced in a 2021 public hearing.
In an effort to explain the write-off of a N$1.7 billion debt as student loans in 2014, the fund began reconstructing records and financial statements in 2018. However, there are no records of how the money was disbursed from 1997 to 2013.
In the financial year ended March 2020, NSFAF received an adverse audit opinion from the auditor general, Junias Kandjeke, indicating misrepresentation and misstatement of the fund’s financial statements.
The politicians describe the acting CEO as dodgy, as he could not provide answers and by requesting more time to come back with specific answers. The committee members questioned how the CEO, as an accounting officer who has been with the fund for a long time, claims he does not have figures on the issues of the students funded without identification documents.
It was also revealed that over 3 000 students did not submit complete names and identification numbers but benefitted from the fund.
Kandume said the fund has approached the ministry of home affairs in an attempt to trace the beneficiaries; however, they managed to trace only 300 beneficiaries.
“As of May 2023, 3 638 students have no Namibian identification number, and we have engaged the ministry of home affairs to obtain identification numbers for tracing purposes. The others, we could not recover them,” he explained.
The public hearing is expected to continue next week.
– ljason@nepc.com.na