 |
| Education CS Amina Mohammed |
University students who depend on loans from the Higher Education Loans Board face increasing challenges accessing their funds once these have been approved. Due to growing inefficiencies within the Board, the transmission of funds from the institution's bankers to the bank accounts held by student applicants in the various commercial banks are increasingly delayed, destabilising the finances of students and parents.
Several students have been forced to defer their courses for at least a semester or more due to the delays in the funds disbursement, according to our investigations. As a result of the problems, which have become acute at the Board over the past year, HELB receives more complaints than its officials can handle, and an internal debate is ongoing whether to establish a desk specifically dedicated to the handling of student complaints.
According to investigations by The Weekly Vision, hundreds of students who had their loan applications approved in December are yet to receive the funds. A number of students who approached this online newspaper indicated that the processing of their loans had taken up to four or five months in the last two semesters.
The most affected institutions, according to anecdotal information from the students who spoke to us, are applicants from the newly-established public universities such as Dedan Kimathi, Maasai Mara, Rongo and Laikipia.
 |
| HELB CEO Charles Ringera |
The rapid expansion of universities in the last eight years has put HELB under pressure to provide loans to all qualifying students given its limited funding. However, the government has also sharply increased its funding to the agency, which has in turn adopted robust measures of recovering loans to former students currently in salaried employment or business.
The government's allocation for HELB has been increasing rapidly to cater for rising student numbers and increase in the minimum and maximum allocation for qualifying students to cater for rising inflation. In 2016/17, the Treasury allocation Sh1.6 billion more over 2015/16 financial year, reaching Sh9.1 billion. Allocation for HELB in the 2017/18 financial year has risen further to Sh10.1 billion.
Since the board's establishment, disbursements to qualifying students ranged between Sh35,000 and Sh50,000 per academic year, with Sh8,000 paid directly to the universities for tuition. Since 2016, HELB has also responded to the increasing inflation rate and reviewed its loan allocations to a minimum loan of Sh40,000 and a maximum of Sh60,000 per year.
However, the growth of funds has come amid growing inefficiency, with the board suffering a high degree of cronyism and corruption that now threaten the stability of Kenya's successful higher education financing scheme.
 |
| University students |
The problem is not the large of students who need help but can't get it from HELB. The challenge is how HELB is treating its qualified loanees and former students paying interest.
According to well-placed sources, the finance department of HELB is a hotbed of corruption, with senior officials colluding internally and externally to cut the money awarded to students. The board's criteria and conditions governing the granting of loans is routinely abused, according to insiders who availed to this website a series of complaints.
While HELB has firm contracts with financial institutions for the purpose of loans disbursement and recovery, some of its senior managers undercut and make huge money through corruption.
Also emerging is how a debt collection company contracted by HELB handles the case of former loaness currently working abroad. When the crooks have known that one is not servicing HELB loans, they make proposals to bill them with big amounts. Once this goes to HELB, it is recovered as over-payment in a scheme that benefits the managers.
The institution has spent considerable amounts of money developing policies for regulating the management of the fund, but implementation is weak.
0 Comments