The Students Loan Trust Fund has served notice it will start pursuing its beneficiaries who have defaulted in the repayment of loans.
According to the Fund, some borrowers of the scheme who have completed their courses of study and are due for repayment of their loans have failed to do so.
The SLTF said they may be forced to use drastic measures to get people to start the repayment of their loans.
In an interview with Citi News, the Public Relations Officer of the SLTF, Henry Nii Dottey said the fund defaulters should make good their indebtedness to the Fund to avert any form of embarrassment.
He said: “We have given these high concessionary rate loans to students expecting them to pay because they are not free money. We expect them to pay back because we need to give them out to other students so they can benefit from the same scheme their predecessors benefitted from. People are due for repayment but they have not started paying the loans so we are going to start pursuing them. This is government set up fund, not free money therefore we are going to make every possible effort to recover the loans.”
According to Mr. Dottey, his outfit may also resort to retrieving the money from the defaulters by engaging their employers.
He explained: “We are engaging their employers to deduct from their salaries monthly. Again we have the option to publish their name in the papers; we will also make every effort to get in touch with them to repay their loans. We are assuring the guarantors of these loans we will pursue the borrowers until they repay their loans. It is until we are unable to locate the beneficiaries that we may have to make the guarantors pay for the loan.”
Mr. Dottey said “if a student beneficiary has died, family members, guardians or the guarantor of the beneficiary can provide information to support that claim. Again if the student has become permanently incapacitated through an accident, and cannot engage in any meaningful economic activity to repay the loan, the Student Loan Protection Scheme can cover the person.”
