Social Security Trust seeks 30 billion from students

The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) is to recover ?30 billion student loans this year. As at 1999, the Trust had disbursed a total of ?203 billion to beneficiaries of the loans scheme.

Mr K. Osei-Bimpong, Public Affairs Manager of SSNIT, told the Ghanaian Times in an interview on Tuesday, that a major part of the amount would be recovered through outright cash repayment or by instalments. He said that in 1999, ?2.4 billion was recovered- ?974 million of that was by cash payment, while ?1.3 billion and ?144 million were through social security contributions and benefits of guarantors, respectively. In 2000, ?6.8 billion was recovered while ?7.6 billion was repaid.

To ensure that the target was achieved, Mr Osei-Bimpong said that efforts had been intensified throughout the country to have an effective loan recovery system especially through outright cash payment and instalments. Furthermore, arrangements were being made to ensure that the beneficiaries paid at the banks or at the district and regional offices of SSNIT.

Additionally, comprehensive data on outstanding balances are being created to facilitate the process of repayment. Mr Osei-Bimpong noted that although there was an improvement in the rate of repayment, the trust was determined to intensify its efforts through public education to enhance the process of repayments.

He advised against the use of Social Security Contributions to repay the student loans since that could affect the beneficiary’s pension benefits. According to him, the best way to repay the loans was through outright cash payments or instalments.

On this year’s disbursement, he said that ?82 billion had been disbursed to students in both private and tertiary institutions. He said that out of the 54,680 applications received for the 2001/2002 academic year 47,364 had been processed adding that processing for the outstanding applications would be completed by the end of this month. The delay in processing the outstanding applications, he explained, was caused by wrong information supplied on the forms by the applicants.