THE Higher Education Students’ Loans Board (HESLB) will effective early January start publishing names and pictures of chronic defaulters who graduated in the last ten years.
HESLB is also forming a task force that
will comprise of members from the loans board and other stakeholders,
which will seek out employers who do not deduct or remit money deducted
from graduate salaries to face the law.
Addressing journalists yesterday in Dar
es Salaam, HESLB Executive Director, Mr Abdul-Razaq Badru, said the
loans board had issued a 30-day notice to 142,470 former students to pay
loans amounting to 239.3 billion/- or face justice.
“We had issued a four-week notice when
it expired; we added two more weeks, which expire at the end of this
month. We will now move on to take legal measure against the defaulters
that will include publishing their names alongside their pictures,” he
explained.
Mr Badru said the list of names
alongside pictures of the defaulters will also be placed in different
database so they can easily be identified. “We are finalising legal
procedures that will be taken against them and we also said that they
will be forced to pay all expenses used in seeking them,” the ED stated.
Mr Badru said out of the more than 100,000 former students given the
notice about 42,700 went to the HESLB offices and paid.
“Some of them paid the whole amount and
some entered into special agreement to clear the amount that they owe
the loans board. He explained that previously they used to collect about
2bn/- per month but the amount has increased and by November, this
year, they collected 8bn/- per month.
Speaking on the special task force, Mr
Badru called on employers who have not been making any deductions or
remitting the deductions to do so within the next two weeks before the
task force starts executing its duties.
“Legal measures, including paying a fine
or imprisonment, will be taken against employers who are not making any
deductions, deducting a small amount or not making any remittances from
graduates who received education loans from the board,” he explained.
Expounding on the legal punishment,
Acting HESLB Assistant Director of Legal Affairs, Mr Luhano Lupogo, said
the punishment will include 36-month imprisonment or a fine that equals
the amount the employer was supposed to deduct and remit to the loans
board.
Mr Badru said the amended HESLB Act No. 9
of 2004 has increased the amount to be deducted from graduate salaries
from 8 per cent to 15 per cent and also increased the grace period from
12 months to 24 months.“I think all stakeholders who contributed
opinions and ideas to the amendments include Members of Parliament
(MPs).
We had initially proposed an increase of
30 per cent from the 8 per cent, but we settled for 15 per cent as
proposed by stakeholders,” he noted. According to Mr Badru, the amount
of mature loans to be paid to HESLB is 300bn/- out of which 140bn/- has
already been collected.
The list of beneficiaries who have not
paid loans includes those who took loans between 1994/95 and 2005 when
the then Ministry of Higher Education was charged with the role of
issuing loans to students.
When HESLB started operations in 2005,
it took over the responsibility of pursuing payment of loans amounting
to 51.1bn/- that had been issued by the ministry to 48,378 students. By
June 2016, a total of 379,179 Tanzanians had benefited from HESLB loans
since the board’s establishment in June 1994.
The amount issued to these beneficiaries
has reached 2.6 trillion/-, according to Mr Badru. A total of 238,430
former students were supposed to have started repaying their loans after
the expiry of the grace period, amounting to 1.4 trillion/-.
Some of these loans are being repaid and
others are not because beneficiaries or their employers have not yet
come forward to commit themselves
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