Over Sh250m collected as graduates throng Helb in last-minute rush to clear advances

By AUGUSTINE ODUOR

Kenya: Hundreds of university graduates thronged Higher Education Loans Board (Helb) offices to clear their debts ahead of today’s expiry of one-month penalty waiver amnesty.

Until yesterday, over 3,000 defaulters had cleared their loans with a total collection of Sh250 million.

Helb CEO Charles Ringera said the figure is expected to rise by close of business today as hundreds are expected to seek clearance

The corridors of the loans agency offices at Anniversary Towers in Nairobi were beehive of activity yesterday as many people rushed to make payments.

Last month, Helb granted a reprieve to defaulters, who would make lumpsum repayment of their debts as loans recovery strategy.

The waiver has seen some graduates exempted from paying up to Sh200,000 as penalty fees.

Harsh fine

The 30-day reprieve targeted 75,000 defaulters who are currently holding Sh8.3 billion.

According to the Helb Act of 1995, each student who fails to remit their monthly payment is charged Sh5,000 per month as penalty.

Employers who also fail to remit monthly deductions of their graduate employees three months after recruitment are also slapped with a fine of Sh3,000 per person per month.

Ringera said the fines levied on defaulters will be in force immediately after today’s deadline and threatened to seek legal redress.

He said a team of 16 prosecutors has been hired to help the agency track defaulter employers in another strategy to scale up loans recovery.

He said the agency has projected to collect over Sh3 billion in the next financial year to recover billions of shillings held by past beneficiaries as it moves to reduce its dependence on annual allocations from Treasury.

“If we get the monies, we shall increase minimum loan award to Sh60,000, up from Sh40,000,” he said.  Ringera also told The Standard that a wider bracket of students joining universities will also be covered with adequate repayment strategy.

Ringera said there will be no extension of amnesty deadline and noted that the fine will be reinforced after today.

5,000 graduates

He said three floors have been set aside to manage the huge traffic.

He said since May 6 when the reprieve was effected, the agency staff has been offering services to some 5,000 graduates daily.

“For the last one week, we have seen a huge number of about 800 to 1,000 people coming to make inquiries and to pay their debts as well,” Ringera said.

The rush has also been necessitated by the fact that employment in the civil service requires that one is cleared by Helb.

It is increasingly getting difficult to make certain transactions or even to access loans without a certificate of clearance from Helb.

Statistics from payments department show that the past seven days have registered bigger payments of an average of Sh15 million daily.

Between May 23 and yesterday, the monies recovered range between Sh16 million and Sh27 million daily.

“As at yesterday, we have served 10,256 clients. Of these, some 2, 900 graduates have repaid their loans with over 250 million collected,” said Geoffrey Monari, Loans Recovery and Repayment Manager.

Some of the graduates who spoke to The Standard said they had queued for up to six hours to get service.

They, however, noted that it was worth the wait as some of them were exempted from paying as much as Sh200,000 after the waiver.