HESLB stops loans for 2,700 students

THE Higher Education Students’ Loans Board HESLB has issued seven days for the students to avail themselves for verification in their respective universities, failure of which they will be required to return the loans in full or face disciplinary and legal actions.

The Acting Executive Director of HESLB, Mr Jerry Sabi, said the move was a result of failure of the students to turn up for verification. “We are suspending for a while loans for students who did not show up for verification because we do not know if they are real students or ghost students ... or maybe during the verification exercise they were sick,” he explained.

In May, the Minister for Education, Science, Technology and Vocational Training, Professor Joyce Ndalichako, directed the board to conduct verification in all higher learning institutions to flash out students who were not eligible for loans.

HESLB started the verification exercise in 26 universities from May and has already analysed 18 universities out of the 26. Mr Sabi said the exercise was conducted by a special team formed by the Loans Board, which found out that 2,739 students did not show up for verification as the exercise in the remaining eight universities was continuing.

The acting executive director said the board would conduct a second verification exercise before announcing students and the money saved from identifying the ghost students. “I call on all students who have not been verified to do so immediately before this exercise is over.

Those who will fail to be verified will automatically disqualify themselves from receiving loans again,” he explained.

Mr Sabi said the names of the students who did not turn up for verification had been posted on the HESLB website and in the respective universities. He noted that the board had expanded the verification exercise to all universities in the country and will be completed by end of August instead of July, this year, as it was previously planned.

The acting executive director named verified universities and number of students who did not turn up for the authentication exercise before receiving their loans in brackets as the University of Dodoma (763), Ruaha Catholic University (126), St. Augustine University Mwanza (232), Mzumbe University (66) and Teofilo Kisanji University, Mbeya (130).

Others are St Augustine University, Mbeya (21), St John’s University-Dodoma (262), Mkwawa University (103), University of Iringa (100) and the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences, Bugando, Mwanza (43).

The rest are University of Arusha (55), Jordan University (128), Makumira University, Arusha (98), Sokoine University of Agriculture (385), Arusha Technical College (22), Muslim University of Morogoro (130), College of Business Education (57) and Mount Meru University (17).