How students defraud parents despite financial constraints

Dar es Salaam. Some university students who benefit from education loans are also cashing in from their parents after cheating to have no access to government financing, The Citizen can reveal.

This happens when the government is struggling to find money that can be loaned to needy students, especially those from poor backgrounds or orphans. The Higher Education Student Loans Board (Heslb) offers loans to cover tuition fees and meal, accommodation and stationery allowances.

The meal and accommodation allowance, commonly known by the students as “Boom,” is uniformly offered for all students, but the tuition fee is issued in percentage grades, which depend on the respective student’s information subjected to means testing.

However, a week-long survey by The Citizen has revealed that in some local universities, a number of students are milking both the loan board and their poor parents.

“I can’t tell my parents if I got the Boom. I know they will pay for my tuition,” says one of the first-year students of the University of Dar es Salaam in a conversation with her colleagues at one of the study gardens at the Mlimani campus.

“I get 100 percent of my tuition fee, but I want the money to do other things. Last month, my father sold part of his farm and paid part of the tuition fee for the first semester,” added the young girl (name withheld).

When the reporter joined the conversation involving five students, another second-year student said that her parents did not understand anything about the loans.

“Hmmm! It’s not just you, my friend. I also do the same because my mother is hardworking, and she can’t ignore when I tell her I’m suffering. She has been paying for my fees,” she explained.

“I told my mother that I got a 30 percent loan, while in reality I received an 80 percent loan. She believed me because she didn’t know anything that was going on, even though she encouraged me to apply for a loan and was a guarantor,” she explained with confidence and joy.

“Actually, with the current state of life, parents must also be responsible because the loan has been shrinking,” she added.

The situation is similar for students at other universities, where students benefit from the education loan. Juma, a third-year student at the University of Dodoma, says that if he had not lied to his parents about the amount of loan he received every year, he would not have opened a stationery store and a barbershop.

“I didn’t want my parents to know that I got a 100 percent loan because they wouldn’t approve my business. That’s why they have been paying my tuition fees, even if it is difficult for them,” he tells The Citizen in an interview.

“I receive no less than Sh3 million per year from Helsb, but only spend Sh200,000 to top up tuition fees. The rest is paid by my parents. It’s not good, but when I graduate, they will understand me better,” he explains.

Parents are in distress

Mr Yusufu Amani, 46, a resident of Segerea in Dar es Salaam said he was shocked to learn that his son has been getting money from the loans board without telling him. “Instead, he has always been bothering me to find him accommodation and fees, which I have done faithfully all along,” he says.

“My neighbour’s son, who studies with my son at Mzumbe University, one day heard me worrying about paying fees. Then he was surprised that I didn’t know if my son benefited from the education loan,” he says.

 “I didn’t expect my son to be so cruel and deceitful. I regretted trusting him and not following every step of his education and even the loan application outcomes,” he laments.

Mr Amani, who has other children who depend on him at lower levels of education, says that after finding out the truth, two years after his son joined the college, he followed up at the college and discovered that his son actually got the loan.

“Parents have to take responsibility and start monitoring the behaviour of our children in schools and colleges. I trusted my son a lot, but he has robbed me of millions,” he explains.

Mrs Monica Masawe, says her daughter never sympathised with her being a small-scale farmer, but asked her for money to cater for accommodation, fees, and attachment, without forgetting a laptop.

“I discovered this after my daughter came home, claiming to have no money,” she said.

“When I was home with her mobile phone, a financial transaction message came in. I was shocked to see she received about Sh1.3 million. I asked her harshly and she admitted to having been getting the education loan while pretending that it was not enough for her,” she adds.

Loan disbursement procedure

Heslb was established to assist “needy” and eligible Tanzanian students to access loans and grants for higher education.

The board aims to assist, on a loan basis, students with admission to accredited higher learning institutions who have no economic power to pay for the costs of their education.

According to the board, guarantors, who are often parents or guardians, are required to attest to the correctness and authenticity of the applicant’s information as well as remind the applicant of their responsibilities.

Also, according to allocation procedures, Heslb enters into a contract with the student or applicant and not the parent. So, it is not the board’s responsibility to understand the agreement between the guarantor and the beneficiary.

“Our procedure is known; that of students deceiving parents is not in our guidelines.

So, I cannot talk about it. The matter lies with the morals of the beneficiary himself,” says Ms Veneranda Malima, Heslb communications officer.

“It is like a husband can be paid a salary, but he decided to lie to his wife and say that he has not been paid for three months. This is a moral issue that has nothing to do with the board,” she added.

She also noted that they have often received parents or guardians who monitor their children’s lack of credit after applying, but “we have never seen a parent who wants to know how much credit their son is getting.”

The dilemma

“It is very painful to see that there are families that can pay for their children to study at universities while their children are queuing for a loan,” says Dr Joseph Amon, a retired lecturer at Mzumbe University.

According to him, it is a parent’s responsibility to monitor every step of their child, even if he is at university.

“If there are those who can pay for their children’s education, then they should show patriotism and allow needy students to apply for the loans,” said Dr Amon.

“We cannot blame Heslb for the loss of morals of our children who reach the point of bullying us. This means there is also deception among parents when it comes to getting loans for their children,” he explained.

According to Dr Rose Mchechu, an educationist based in Dar es Salaam, many parents are ignorant when it comes to the issue of their children, trusting them too much.

“This is undermining the government. Your son applies for a loan by showing his poverty, he succeeds, and then he lies to you, and you find ways to find and pay him? This situation must be looked at because there are a lot of people in need of these loans,” she said.

“Parents should be given education and have a procedure to go to colleges or Heslb to check if their children have received loans and for how much, so that we can avoid this ongoing sabotage of the economy,” she said.