STUDENTS’ LOANS BOARD RECOVERS OVER K20M

By KALOBWE BWALYA THE Higher Education Loans and Scholarships Board (HELSB) has recovered K20.4 million from January 1 to March 31, this year which was loaned to university students. HELSB Chief Executive Officer, Irene Chirwa, said the recovery brings the cumulative total of recoveries to K115.6 collected from 2018 to March 31, 2021. Ms Chirwa …

STUDENTS’ LOANS BOARD RECOVERS OVER K20M
By KALOBWE BWALYA THE Higher Education Loans and Scholarships Board (HELSB) has recovered K20.4 million from January 1 to March 31, this year which was loaned to university students. HELSB Chief Executive Officer, Irene Chirwa, said the recovery brings the cumulative total of recoveries to K115.6 collected from 2018 to March 31, 2021. Ms Chirwa said 6, 291 were paying back the money through the Government payroll while 4, 100 beneficiaries employed in the private sector were paying back through their employers’ payroll systems. She said HELSB also established that 80 beneficiaries passed on and their loans will be treated as bad debt because they were not insured. Ms Chirwa said this at a media breakfast in Lusaka yesterday where she announced that HELSB had extended the granting of student loans to five more universities because of the favourable response from the recoveries. She said the five universities were Kapasa Makasa, Mukuba, Mulungushi, Chalimbana and Kwame Nkrumah. Ms Chirwa added that the number of individuals making direct repayments has also increased from one in 2018 to 38 by March 31 this year. She said the money recovered in the first quarter of the year was encouraging and anticipated that the board would recover more during the course of this year.