Higher education minister Itah Kandjii-Murangi has ordered a committee tasked to reform the Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAF) to speed up the process and report back on progress made. 

Cabinet has been mulling plans for years to scrap the parastatal status of the student funding body, and to allow it to operate as a directorate under the ministry of higher education.  

“We should avoid being
fixated on our past year’s achievements and challenges. We are in 2022 now,” Kandjii-Murangi said yesterday while addressing staff and stakeholders. “This is the year of reimaging. The technology and innovation leg of the ministry has to take centre-stage and be visible. 

We aim to accelerate NSFAF reform work. In fact, to those in the committee that is spearheading this, please submit your draft timeline for this year - for us to discuss and agree to it.” 

A committee headed by the higher education ministry, which also includes representatives from the finance ministry, was established with the sole objective to restructure the fund. The plan to restructure the fund has been coming since 2017 when Kandjii-Murangi announced that NSFAF would become a directorate in her ministry as per a Cabinet suggestion. However, for such a move to be possible, the law under which the entity was founded would first have to be repealed. 

NSFAF was initially turned into a parastatal because government had no capacity to handle its complex affairs. The NSFAF Act No.26 of 2000 came into being and operational in 2000, replacing the Public Service Bursary Scheme, whose purpose was to train people to work solely in the civil service.  

NSFAF was then established in 2013 as a parastatal in order to provide financial assistance by way of study loans to all needy fulltime Namibian students enrolled at recognised higher learning institutions. 

This means that from 2000 to 2012, NSFAF was operating as a directorate under the ministry of education. 

–anakale@nepc.com.na