Staff Reporter
THE Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAF), Kennedy Kandume, faced intense questioning from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts regarding the loss of 18,205 student files in 2013. These files were handled by a company called One Call Solutions (OCS), which is registered as a farming and estate leasing company at BIPA.
Kandume explained that NSFAF became a state-owned entity in May 2013 and moved to new premises, ceasing to be a department within the Ministry of Education, Arts, and Culture.
According to the Acting CEO, OCS was already providing services to the Ministry of Education and was hired to handle the relocation of files and data management for NSFAF. Kandume said that NSFAF does not have any tender documents indicating how the farm leasing company was entrusted with the lost student records.
“The then CEO wrote a letter to the Permanent Secretary requesting for a list of payments made to students, supporting documents of transactions, rules under which the funds were dispersed under each year. With this information. It tells me that this information was not submitted.
Hence this letter was written. OCS was contracted to relocate 18, 205 Student files from the headquarters of Ministry of Education to NSFAF premises. After this letter, I do not recall the fund receiving this information. A letter was written on 24 June 2014, requesting for these documents, and they were the ones that were not received,” Kandume argued.
The CEO also clarified that the invoices paid to OCS were for delivering physical files and implementing the Lex system, but they did not receive the financial information.
In addition, the CEO updated the committee on the NSFAF’s loan book, stating that as of 31 March 2023, the total loan book stood at N$12.5 billion, with N$116.8 million recovered. He noted that all interest on the loan amounts has been written off as per the president’s directive.
