Mokonyane says exports recovered strongly, but that this was offset by contractions in household expenditure. (Reuters)
Intellimali, a company that administers payments for students on financial aid at Walter Sisulu University (WSU), has threatened to pursue a case against a student who was mistakenly paid R14-million instead of the allocated R1 400 for food allowance.
The student, who posted photos of the receipt on social media, is on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). The R14-million was paid into her IntelliCard account in June 2017. IntelliCard is a payment facility operated by Intellimali. The error, however, was only picked up by the company in early August.
By that time, the student had spent R818 000, Intellimali said in a press statement on Wednesday.
“The student, whose name is known to Intellimali, did not report the oversight but chose rather to access the funds,” the company said.
The student is believed to be a member of student political organisation the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania. She said in a Facebook post that she had reported the misallocated funds to the university’s student representative council.
‘‘The answer is simple NSFAS made a mistake and allocated more money in a wrong account and that account happened to be mine,’’ she wrote.
‘‘So I am not denying anything, the money was indeed loaded on the 1st of June and reversed on the 13th August .”
But Intermalli believe that she is liable for R818 000. The company accepted responsibility for the incident saying that neither NSFAS nor WSU had erred. Intermali has launched an investigation into how the blunder happened, but said that there was only one student who received a mistaken amount of money at WSU, while the rest had been paid their normal R1 400 monthly food allowance. WSU currently has 3 500 students who receive a food allowance.