Students attending higher schools nationwide now have access to GH12 million in loans with no guarantees according to the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF).
The loan, which is the first disbursement since the "No Guarantor Loan Scheme" was introduced a month ago, was accessible by a total of 10,000 students from 148 educational schools around the nation.
Nana Kwaku Agyei Yeboah, the Chief Executive Officer of the SLTF, revealed this to media in Accra last Friday. He claimed the sum covered payment to just first-time applicants for the year's first semester.
The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) had 787 first-time applications, the University of Ghana had 511 students, and the University of Education, Winneba had 1,523, the greatest number of recipients.
Takoradi Technical University had 371 students while Koforidua Technical University had 488.
According to Nana Agyei Yeboah, based on the needs of the students and following a means-testing evaluation by the SLTF before disbursement to the students, the sums received by the students ranged from GH1,500 being the lowest to GH3,000 being the highest.
The payment, according to him, would significantly lessen the burden on students while they pursued their educations on numerous universities around the nation.
ongoing learners
The country's continuing students who were recipients of the Students Loan Scheme were paid in March of this year, according to the CEO. He promised that every effort would be taken to guarantee that beneficiaries received payments of monies to students on schedule in order to prevent financial difficulties for the students.
In order to guarantee that the government always had enough money to operate the programme for the benefit of others, Nana Agyei Yeboah made an appeal to the program's recipients to make sure they willingly paid back their loans.
Exceptions
The CEO stated that the only individuals who had not yet received payment were those who had applied but had not submitted all of the necessary information to the system.
He asked them to complete their documents as soon as possible and provide their biometrics so they may be compensated. In order for them to take advantage of the loan, which was freely available to all qualifying students regardless of their political, social, religious, and ethnic orientation, Nana Agyei Yeboah urged those who had not yet applied to the plan to do so.