“HELB” a term known all too well by kenyan university students, students in technical and vocational training institutions limited to those within the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. That loan that helps you through out your college years then rued the minutte the board comes knocking for its money back. If only there were means to forgive these debts. Well on the other side of the world, in 2010, US President Barack Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. The piece relevant to this article however is student loan initiatives included in this law informally known as the “Obama student loan forgiveness” plan. As of 2014, Americans enrolling in colleges can now benefit from expanded repayment plans and more generous repayment terms. The ultimate goal of Obama’s student loan reform is to place an affordable college education within the reach of more Americans.
I too thought “forgiveness”meant having one’s debts completely waived but in reality, measures are put in place to ease the burden. These includes consolidation of all student loans so that a suitable plan may be used in repayment, an income based recovery plan which is lower than the standard payment in place; the debt might be forgiven after 20 years (down from 25yrs) of making regular payments on a student loan. Responsible borrowers can qualify to have the rest of their loan forgiven. It gets even sweeter {for lack of a better word}. Public service workers such as teachers, nurses, peace officers, and members of the military, may qualify for loan forgiveness after 10 years of making regular monthly payments.
Kenya on the other hand has the ropes tightened as the Higher Education Loan Board keeps coming up with ways to ensure the loan repayment compliance is achieved. Right now, any defaulters regardless whether they have notified the board or not face an automatic cumulative monthly fine of KSh. 5,000. Maybe this is one of the reasons students go on the offensive whenever loans are delayed. HELB now Working closely with the professional bodies to widen and deepen loan recoveries. The board partnered with National Social Security Fund (NSSF) to be able to access NSSF data to help it collect key information necessary to linkage with past HELB loanees. To this end, HELB is already collaborating with the Kenya Revenue Authority, National Hospital Insurance Fund, Retirement Benefits Authority, Central Bank Kenya, SASRA, Capital Markets Authority and credit reference bureaus.
The 6th March, HELB (Amendment) Bill, 2015 aimed to amend the HELB Act proposes that within a year of graduation one is to inform the board in writing that they’ve not been able to secure an employment, then the default levy is not to be imposed. This makes a lot of sense because it is quite burdensome to have penalties imposed even before you get the chance to work towards repaying the same.Knowing kenyans, I must also bring into perspective that some loan-repayment-avoiding-crooks might use this to try to evade their responsibility all together.
The bill also proposes to provide for student representation in the board and further allow minors to make applications through a guardian or parent. Section 4 of Cap 213A of the HELB Act amended to include two student representatives on the board, one of who shall be from a public university and the other from a private university elected by their student leader on a “rational” basis and shall serve for a period not exceeding 2 years. I’ll let you be the judge of this need for student representation. No loan forgiveness for us though. The billions put out every year to fund this system necessitates that the monies get reverted back in order for the operations to continue smoothly.
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