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DA laments lack of information from education budget vote

Inside South Africa's parliament
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The Democratic Alliance (DA) has lamented the lack of information that will allow Parliament to conduct oversight over several entities that fall under the Department of Higher Education.

During the Department’s budget vote in the National Assembly, the party’s Belinda Bozzoli says not a single one of the 84 entities have presented their budgets nor annual performance plans to Parliament.

Bozzoli says these include the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nfsas) and the 21 SETAs.

“Any of the 50 TVET Colleges many of which we know are failing, and which have struggled to conform to the PFMA. The R3 billion National Skills Fund, which appears to have become something of a piggy bank for random use. We have a major problem of oversight here. How can we support this massive budget if we have little or no idea of what the situation is in many of its sub-budgets? How can we blandly approve of expenditure in this troubled portfolio, with no clue of where the problems lie and how they are, or are not, being addressed?” asks Bozzoli.

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