Education ministry worried over delay in repaying students loan

Minister of Education, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agymang, has expressed worry over the refusal of persons who have benefited from Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) to pay back loans they secure years after they complete school.

The Minister, who bemoaned such acts, said the behavior if not checked could have adverse consequence on the sustenance of the fund.

Speaking at the launch of the 10th-anniversary celebration of the Fund, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, applauded the management and the board of the SLTF for supporting needy students to further their education.

She emphasized the need for a revolving fund in the next ten years to safeguard the funds, adding that her outfit was looking at the feasibility of making the fund accessible to fresh students in tertiary institutions.

A total of eighty thousand students in 152 tertiary institutions in the country have so far benefited from the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF).

The institutions consist of both public and private universities, colleges of education and polytechnics.

The Chief Executive Officer Mrs Sheila Naah-Boamah stated that as part of measures to ensure the timely release of the funds to beneficiaries, students could now access the funds within a period of two weeks after application.

She noted this would allow the applicants, who were students, the opportunity to focus on their studies as against spending time making follow ups on the money and wondering when it would be released to them.

Mrs Naah-Boamah revealed that the fund had now established a flexible term limit for applicants to repay their loans and adding that “beneficiaries have two years’ grace period to pay back the loan after graduation”.

She disclosed that “district assemblies and institutionalised religious bodies can now endorse the forms of applicants in their respective areas”, a development which will save potential beneficiaries from looking for individual guarantors to fill their application forms.