Crisis as 140,000 students miss out on helb loans

A major crisis looms in the funding of students to institutions of higher learning after it emerged that HELB has no funds to loan some 140,000 students.

Parliament has been told the Higher Education Loans Board has run out of cash forcing parents and guardians to seek alternatives to pay tuition fees for their children.

The parents have also been forced to foot accommodation and upkeep costs for their children in universities, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges.

Helb told MPs on Wednesday that students will have to wait longer until the Treasury releases Sh5.7 billion for onward disbursement to them.

Helb loans are the lifeline for thousands of students from poor families who require financial support to pursue higher education.

“Currently we have 140,000 students in Tvets and universities that we have not been able to fund to the tune of Sh5.7 billion because we have run out of the budget that we had presented to Treasury of Sh4.5 billion,” said Helb chief executive Charles Ringera.

The agency also revealed that in the last financial year, it did not finance some 75,000 students after the National Treasury delayed disbursements of Sh3 billion.

Ringera said the delays mean that the students, mostly first-years, will have to find alternative means of paying for their tuition, accommodation and upkeep.

In what spells further doom, a request for additional financing through the recently passed supplementary budget was rejected by MPs.

Helb was allocated Sh14.8 billion to finance students based on their economic backgrounds in the current financial year.

Successful students who manage to have their loan requests approved receive between Sh35,000 and Sh60,000 per year.

Sh8,000 is then sent directly to the university as tuition fees.

The students then receive the remaining balance in two equal tranches for two semesters.

Ringera told the National Assembly Public Investments Committee on Education and Governance (PICEG) that on average, Helb collects around Sh400 million from former loanees.

"This is what we add to the quarterly disbursements by Treasury to service applications by ongoing students,” he said.

The first Treasury disbursement is normally expected around August each year.

This is nearly a month before universities and colleges open around September.

“The quarter exchequer release is about Sh3 billion while what Helb has collected by that time is Sh1.2 billion, totalling to around Sh4.2 billion, which is way below the Sh7 billion required to adequately service loan applications,” he said.

Ringera said that in September last year, Treasury released Sh5.6 billion while the agency had collected about Sh4 billion.

"When we added the two we were able to settle the entire bill for September/ October,” said Ringera.

In December, the Treasury released only Sh2.5 billion followings students' protests.