AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE Higher Education Students Loans Board (HESLB), intends to collect 200bn/-from loans recovery, parliament was told here.
In a written response to a question posed by Special Seats Lawmaker, Susan Lyimo (CHADEMA), the ministry of Education, Science and Technology said the government was satisfied by the ongoing trend at HESLB on loan recovery from beneficiaries.
In her question, Ms Lyimo expressed her dismay on loans recovery, saying after the 15 percent increment on deductions, some beneficiaries were forced to clear their outstanding debts for a period of up to 30 years, something which was difficult to recover the loans as some beneficiaries die even before they finish to clear their debts.
According to the MP, as of 2019, only 11,000 out of 500,000 loan beneficiaries (an equivalent of 2,3 per cent) had cleared their debts, meaning that it was difficult to collect debts from the remaining number of people.
The Special Seats MP wanted to know if the government had plans whatsoever to amend the law in order to have debts recovered at a higher speed.
However, the ministry said since the amendment of the law in 2016, the government was satisfied by the speed in which the debts were being cleared by beneficiaries.
“In this financial year, we expect to collect 200bn/-against 183bn/-that we collected last year, and as of now, we don’t see any need to amend the law, and if there are needs to amend it, an MP can move a private motion if he or she deems fit,’’ said the ministry, Statistics from HESLB show that board’s loan recoveries have within four years increased almost ten times, from 21bn/-in 2014/15 to 183bn/-in the 2018/19 fiscal year.
And, during the board’s 14 years of operations, the government disbursed 3.8tri/-to 400,100 students of higher learning institutions, with 1.8tri/-, or 47 per cent of the entire disbursement released within the four years of President Magufuli’s administration.
The number of beneficiaries as well increased from 100,936 in 2014/15 to 128,285 students this academic year.
In another development, Ms Lyimo, who was working at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), in the office of Dean of Students before joining politics, was also unhappy with the trend of suspending students’ leaders who were organising strikes when HESLB delayed disbursement of student’s loans.
But, the ministry said the government was not frustrating students, instead, it asked students’ leaders to use the right means in pushing for their demands.
On loan delays, the ministry said there were no delays to students who filled in their forms properly as the money was there.
