50% varsity student loan applicants to miss out

Kyambogo University students check for their results on the notice board at the university campus recently. Photo by Abubaker Lubowa.

What you need to know:

The applications for the scheme havemore than doubled the number of slots available.

Kampala

Although government is ready to help only 1,000 students access loans under the higher education students’ loan scheme, twice the number have submitted their applications to be considered for the programme.

According to Mr Michael Wanyama, the coordinator of the higher education loan scheme, a total of 2,029 students had by last week submitted their applications to the Secretariat. “The law gives us three weeks to evaluate the applications and we hope by early next month, we would have completed this exercise,” Mr Wanyama said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The deadline for receiving application forms elapsed last week. Mr Wanyama said some students applied for the loans yet they had also been considered under the government university scholarship.

To be reassessed
“Our board is going to look into this and some students who have been considered under the government scholarship scheme but had already submitted their applications to the Secretariat will definitely lose their slots to other needy students,” he said.

Government has put an interest of seven per cent on the loans, meaning the Shs4 million each student will get every year will attract an interest of Shs280,000. Centenary Bank is the only bank that government has so far partnered with to give the loans, according to Mr Wanyama.

Government has already put aside Shs5billion to kick start the scheme which has been on paper for over a decade. The scheme is intended to enable students from poor backgrounds access higher education using money borrowed from government.

To qualify for the loan, students must have already gained admission in the selected 13 universities of Makerere, Kyambogo, Mbarara, Gulu, Busitema, Muni, Kampala International University and Nkumba .Others are; Bugema, Ndejje, Uganda Christian University ,Uganda Martyrs University and Islamic University in Uganda.

According to the Higher Education Students Financing Act, 2014, repayment of the loan shall be charged on the income of the person who received the loan.