HESLB lands in Bunge to fish out loan defaulters

ROSE ATHUMANI in Dodoma

AS if to show that parliamentarians have to lead by example, the Higher Education Students’ Loans Board (HESLB) has landed in the National Assembly seeking to fish out Members of Parliament (MPs), who are still to repay their education loans.

The office of the Clerk of the National Assembly is conducting a verification exercise to find out if there are MPs who benefitted from the education loans, from 1994/95 onwards, but have not paid back.

Reading out directives to the MPs yesterday, the Deputy Speaker, Dr Tulia Ackson, said the verification exercise is being carried out because most of the legislators were doing other duties before they were elected in November 2015.

“The verification exercise will save the MPs who have not paid back the loans from unnecessary disturbances, including embarrassment from being dragged to courts,” she explained. The MPs were given special forms to fill, especially those who benefitted from the education loans, but have not paid back.

“I also benefitted from the education loan, but I have finished paying back. So you must pay back,” Dr Ackson stressed. Since taking office, one and a half years ago, President John Magufuli’s government shook up the HESLB administration to bring about effectiveness in collecting debts from beneficiaries and control fraudulent expenditures.

The list of beneficiaries, who have not repaid their loans, include 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 operating in 2005, it took over the responsibility of pursuing payment of loans amounting to 51.1bn/-, issued by the ministry to 48,378 students. Amendment of the HESLB Act of 2004, passed by the August House in November, last year, increased the deduction of the education loan from beneficiaries’ basic salary from eight per cent to 15 per cent from January, this year.