- calls for review of the appropriation process
The Executive Director of African Education Watch (Eduwatch), Kofi Asare, has stated that the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) is unresponsive to the needs of the students, hence, the need to review it.
According to him, for the SLTF to be fit for its purpose, it must be reviewed and aligned to meet two key attributes – firstly, realistic to the cost of student’s tuition fees and secondly, disbursed at the beginning of the academic year.
He bemoaned that the SLTF gives on average GH₵2,500 to a student, which is not enough to pay 70 percent of the fees of a Pharmacy or Medical student. And to make matters worse, the SLTF has been in arrears for over a year.
“Students who were admitted into various tertiary institutions last academic year and applied for the students’ loan are yet to receive disbursement, and we are in another academic year. This is because GETFund is not releasing funds to the SLTF. Continuous students in levels 200 and 300 are receiving their loans in tots,” he said.
GETFund
The Ghana Education Trust (GETFund) is the primary source of funding to the SLTF; therefore, the ability of the SLTF to be responsive, providing realistic amounts to students concerning their fees and disburse funds in time depends on the effectiveness of GETFund.
According to Eduwatch, the GETFund only disburses what it receives and so as long as there is no money coming into its coffers, it is incapacitated to help the needs of students. Adding that, SLTF is running the scheme with 40 percent of funds received from students who have completed and paid back their loans, which is not sustainable.
“GETFund has serious liquidity issues and the SLTF system is cash-strapped, it cannot sustain itself with 40 percent of repayments, GETFund must increase the amount disbursed to SLTF,” he said.
Need to Review STLF Law
The CSOs in the education sector have been calling for the review of the STFL law to raise the minimum share of GETFund to the statutory fund from its current two percent to at least 10 percent to ensure the SLTF gets enough funds to support students’ needs.
“The law must be reviewed. As of now, the law states a minimum of two percent, and because of that GETFund is always going for the minimum; so the law must be revised to make it 10 percent so that SLTF can get enough funds to operate.
If we fix this financing architecture for the SLTF, then we can have a students’ support system that will disburse funding much earlier because they are receiving funding at the right time, and also increase the average disbursement to meet realistic fee levels,” Mr. Asare emphasised.
Appropriation System Reset
Eduwatch also called for a reset or re-engineering of the SLTF appropriation process because as it stands now, even if GETFund disburses funds to SLTF at the right time as expected, it will now go through the appropriation process – Parliament has to approve the bill – and by the time that is done, it already March.
Meanwhile, students will go to school in January and so the money must get to the students in January. Therefore, the appropriation process must be done in November and the money released in December, so that in January or February it can be disbursed to students.
“So, we must reset the whole SLTF system and have a national conversation on a responsive students loan regime because what we have here is a token distribution system which is not responsive,” he concluded.
