Students give govt 7 days to issue loans

Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Higher Learning Institutions Students Organisations (Tahliso) leaders have given the government a seven-day ultimatum to urgently find money that will be used to give loans to students who are yet to receive any.

Tahliso chairman Musa Mdede told reporters yesterday that their research has established that thousands of university students have gone without loans since April this year.

After presentation of 2014/15 budget in June this year, the Higher Education Students Loans Board (HELSB) noted that according to the money set aside by the government it would be able to extend loans to 30,000 students only leaving 28,037 others in the sun.

In the press conference yesterday, Mr Mdede came with Edward Markline whom he identified as among those who have not received any loan.

“We cannot accept a situation where billions of shillings have been spent on running the Constituent Assembly, billions more are set to be used in referendum and at the same time the government says it has no money to loan out to students,” he said.

“We ask top officials in government to understand the difficulties facing students who have not been given loans. We want them to act within the next seven days failure of which will force us to make hard decisions,” he added.

Mr Mdede told reporters that they have decided to talk to the media after their efforts to engage the government to resolve the problem hit a hard wall. He noted for instance that their efforts to forward their claims to the ministry have been met with ridicule from some ministry officials, claims that The Citizen on Sunday could not independently verify.

Although he did not go into the details as to what they were planning in case the government missed the deadline, Mr Mdede said they would organise students who are yet to receive their loans to campaign.

For his part, Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) president Himida Elihuruma expressed his dismay over government irresponsiveness to their calls on how it can reduce the burden to HESLB.

“We have proposed that a new policy should be introduced under which students who come from work and those pursuing diplomas can get loans from banks. This would leave HESLB dealing with only those who have completed Form Six. But the government has not responsed,” he said.