The Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) has published the names and photographs of some persons who have defaulted in repaying the loans they took while pursuing their tertiary education in the national dailies.
The first batch of 20 defaulters whose details were published in the November 21, 2019 edition of the Daily Graphic, is part of the over 20,000 defaulters who have not made any efforts to repay the loans.
SLTF Act
“The publication is in accordance with the Students Loan Trust Fund Act 2011, Act 820 Section 2(1-7),” the Head of Public Relations Unit of the SLTF, Mr George Laing, told the Daily Graphic on Thursday.
The procedure for recovery of loan in Act, Section 26 (3) ,for instance, said: “If the borrower or the guarantor fails to repay or make satisfactory arrangement to repay the loan in accordance with the demand notice, the board shall publish the name of the borrower or the guarantor in a state-owned daily newspaper”.
Mr Laing said the publication was part of the name and shame policy of the trust fund to get defaulters to honour their obligations to the state.
“This is just one of the strategies we are putting in place to recover loans that are due. We will be publishing more names and pictures in the coming days.
“Once you take the loan you have a two-year period after school; a two-year moratorium before you start paying. When you start paying for each loan that you took, you have two years to pay back, so if you did a typical four-year degree you have about eight years to repay,” he said.
Details
The SLTF PRO noted that in the case of those whose details had been published, they had completed their studies, failed to meet the two-year moratorium while the eight years repayment period had also passed, without paying anything.
He said the next course of action for those whose names had been published was to take them to court to recover the money, adding that recovering the money was very important since that was to, among others, make the fund sustainable.
The sources of money for the fund, Mr Laing said, were from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), Communications Service Tax, as well as from those who had settled their indebtedness.
“So if people take the loan and are not paying back then the sustainability of the fund is threatened,” he said.
The loan, he said, was not free government money and, therefore, advised all defaulters to endeavour to pay back.
Background
More than 55,000 people owe the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) GH¢75 million, representing default in the repayment of the loans students took to cushion them while in school.
Out of the number, about 35,000 have made some form of payment, leaving more than 20,000 who have not paid anything at all, after the two-year grace period for repayment elapsed.
The debt in the names of those who have not paid anything at all stands at GH¢35 million.
With some of the debts dating as far back as 2012 from the first batch of beneficiaries who took the loan in 2006, the fund managers had warned the borrowers that they would begin to publish the names and pictures of the defaulters in the national dailies in the coming weeks.
LIST OF STUDENT LOAN DEFAULTERS (FIRST BATCH) ATTACHED BELOW
Graphic