Students attending tertiary institutions nationwide now have access to GH12 million in loans with no guarantees thanks to the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF).
The loan, which is the first disbursement since the “No Guarantor Loan Scheme” was introduced a month ago, was accessed by a total of 10,000 students from 148 tertiary institutions across the nation.
First-time applicants from the University of Education, Winneba recorded 1,523, the highest number of beneficiaries, followed by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), which had 787, the University of Ghana, 511 students, and the Koforidua Technical University recorded 488 students. This information was provided to journalists in Accra last Friday by Nana Kwaku Agyei Yeboah, the Chief Executive Officer of the SLTF.
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According to Nana Agyei Yeboah, depending on the needs of the students and after a means-testing assessment by the SLTF before disbursement to the students, the amounts received by the students ranged from GH1,500 being the lowest to GH3,000 as the highest.
The payment, according to him, would significantly lessen the burden on students as they pursued their educations on various campuses across the nation.
CONTINUING STUDENTS:
The country’s continuing students who were recipients of the Students Loan Scheme were paid in March of this year, according to the CEO.
He promised that every effort would be made to ensure that beneficiaries received payments of funds to students on time in order to prevent financial difficulties for the students.
In order to ensure that the government always had enough money to operate the program for the benefit of others, Nana Agyei Yeboah made an appeal to the program’s beneficiaries to make sure they voluntarily paid back their loans.
EXCEPTIONS:
The CEO stated that the only individuals who had not yet received payment were those who had applied but had not submitted all of the necessary information to the scheme.
He urged them to complete their documentation as soon as possible and provide their biometrics so they could be paid.
In order for them to take advantage of the loan, which was readily available to all qualified students regardless of their political, social, religious, and ethnic orientation, Nana Agyei Yeboah urged those who had not yet applied to the scheme to do so.
BACKGROUND:
For many students in tertiary institutions, getting people to guarantee for student loan applicants used to be a significant challenge.
Due to this, the government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo implemented the No Guarantor Loan Scheme to make sure that tertiary students could easily obtain loans to support their education.
Beneficiaries must possess E-zwich cards, a smartcard produced by the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System Limited (GhIPSS), in order to ensure that their funds are transferred easily and without incident.
