PARLIAMENT ORDERS STUDENTS WHO HAVE FAILED LOANS (HESLB) TO BE ACCEPTED IN COLLEGES 2022/2023
As top HESLB officials appear before a parliamentary committee today, it has been established that nearly half of students enrolled for the 2022/23 academic year have missed out on loans
Dar es Salaam. While Higher Education Students’ Loans Board (HESLB) top officials are set to appear before the Parliamentary Social Welfare and Community Development Committee today for questioning, about a half of students admitted to colleges and who had applied for loans in the academic year 2022/23 have missed out.
Top officials’ appearance before the committee comes after Education minister reacted recently that HESLB had sabotaged work of a probe team he had formed for the purpose of auditing Board activities for the past five years.
It was on this basis that Speaker Tulia Ackson ordered the top officials to appear before the committee to answer to the allegations.
PARLIAMENT ORDERS STUDENTS WHO HAVE FAILED LOANS (HESLB) TO BE ACCEPTED IN COLLEGES 2022/2023
Friday, November 04, 2022
First year students selected to join Tumaini University Dar es Salaam College waits to be admitted to the college, Mwenge in Dar es Salaam. Analysis shows that about 38,000 first-year students who applied for funding missed out. FILE PHOTO| MCL
By Janeth Moses
Summary
As top HESLB officials appear before a parliamentary committee today, it has been established that nearly half of students enrolled for the 2022/23 academic year have missed out on loans
Dar es Salaam. While Higher Education Students’ Loans Board (HESLB) top officials are set to appear before the Parliamentary Social Welfare and Community Development Committee today for questioning, about a half of students admitted to colleges and who had applied for loans in the academic year 2022/23 have missed out.
Top officials’ appearance before the committee comes after Education minister reacted recently that HESLB had sabotaged work of a probe team he had formed for the purpose of auditing Board activities for the past five years.
It was on this basis that Speaker Tulia Ackson ordered the top officials to appear before the committee to answer to the allegations.
Meanwhile, observation by The Citizen yesterday showed that approximately 38,000 (48 percent) of first year students who applied for HESLB loans, after having already been admitted to colleges, out of 80,000 who had applied, have missed out in the funding this year.
If all loan applications by first year students were to be successful, then HESLB would need a total of Sh121.62 billion (based on a public university fee structure for Bachelor of Arts with Education) to meet their needs.
However, the government has only set aside Sh570 billion, an amount that was also allocated in the 2021/22 academic year, according to HESLB.
This means, to meet study loans needs for the academic year 2022/23, the government needed to top up the budget by at least Sh121.62 billion pointed out above.
According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology’s budget estimates tabled last May, the government in the 2021/22 academic year expended loans worth Sh569 billion out of Sh570 billion planned to meet needs of 148,581 students.
But, the money, instead, benefited 177,777 students as number of qualifying applicants was much higher than had earlier been estimated.
In 2022/23 academic year, the same amount has been allocated to fund the same number of beneficiaries as in the previous year, hence, over half of new applicants missing out.
According to HESLB, there will be approximated 42,000 graduates, therefore, creating room for approximately the same number to be covered by the allocated fund that remained constant.
This means a student will receive an average of Sh3.2 million a year out of which Sh2.24 million is for books and stationery, meals and accommodation allowance, while the tuition fee is Sh1 million.
Those students who need more tuition fees as per their programmes will only receive a certain percentage of the full loans. For instance, a programme with tuition fees of Sh1.3 million will receive only 77 percent.
Hence, analysis of the above figures shows that, an addition of Sh121.62 billion is needed if the government is to enable all first time loan applicants to be covered. This is if all students would get the same amount of Sh3.2 million a year.
Public outcries have been mounting over claims that some loan applicants missing out were those coming from poor households.
In this regard, experts say limited resources available compared to the ever increasing number of eligible loan applicants, will continue to pile pressure on the government and the Board especially as beneficiaries of the fee free education policy are now reaching tertiary level of studies, hence the need to find lasting solutions.
“We need to understand that demand for funding by eligible students will keep on piling pressure on the Ministry of Education. The only ways to deal with such a scenario is by thinking about how to increase means of higher education funding,” said Dr Thomas Jabir, an education consultant based in Dar es Salaam.
He said that HESLB has been facing several setbacks including poor recovery of loans from beneficiaries because of poor enforcement of the existing law.
“This is another area that the government should think about to ensure that the fund is sustainable for the upcoming generations,” he noted.
He added that government decision to completely abolish most charges on loans collected by HESLB also gave a leeway for some beneficiaries not to feel responsible in servcing the loans, hence, hurting the sustainability of the revolving scheme.
Currently, accordign to HESLB records, debt collection pace stands at 32 percent as some employers fail to cooperate by not reporting employees who benefited from the loans, while others do not facilitate timely remittances of monthly deductions.
“We should ensure that HESLB can collect debts more efficiently, especially from beneficiaries whose debts have matured,” explained Dr Dorothy Masawe, a higher education expert and researcher.
She noted that despite the limited resourced extended to HESLB against the increasing demand by qualified needy students, if debt collection strategies were put in place or enforced properly, all qualified students would get funding.
“The charges were actually very painful for the beneficiaries, but at least they were pushing them to act more responsibly. Let’s make sure that we come up with a new law that will hold the employers and debtors to account for failing in their duties towards the scheme,” she suggested
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