By Mkinga Mkinga
The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam. The Higher Education Students' Loans Board (HESLB) will take to court a total of 81,156 former students who have so far failed to honour clearing their debts.

As per the board’s current statistics, only 1,081 former students have registered and showed how they would repay the loans.In an exclusive interview with The Citizen yesterday, the HESLB acting executive director and assistant director of loan repayment, Mr Juma Chagonja, and Mr Robert Kibona respectively, said the board was finalising sorting out relevant documents before taking the culprits to court by end of this month.

Mr Chagonja said the board would have collected a total of Sh31.503 billion had 69,143 students who took loans from 1994 to 2009 paid. He said the number has since then increased raising the total debt to Sh106.315 billion.

 Mr Chagonja said according to the law, loan beneficiaries were supposed to provide the Board with information of how it would recover the money from them. He added that along with taking the defaulters to court, the Board would also send their names to the ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to act through its embassies on the former students living abroad.

“The embassies will also be provided with names of defaulters. This will affect them at the time they want to renew their visas or passports. This is a serious matter, we want to implement the law,” Mr Chagonja affirmed.

He said those who plan to go for further studies abroad would also be affected if they would be having pending issues with the HESLB.  “Their details will be sent to the ministry of Home Affairs, the department of Immigration and all embassies where they will be denied approval for travelling abroad. Loan beneficiaries who are self employed or unemployed are also required to furnish us with the information,” he said.

Mr Chagonja identified some challenges facing the Board in tracing defaulters include the lack of loan repayment culture, lack of cooperation from some employers, high unemployment levels and migration of loan beneficiaries. Morever, he said the Board would also involve the Bank of Tanzania through the establishment of a credit bureau, where the information of defaulters would also be made available and they would be denied loans from financial institutions.

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