President William Ruto has dismissed reports indicating that the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) is cash-strapped.
Speaking at the Kisii National Polytechnic on Thursday during the first day of his three-day visit to Kisii, Nyamira and Migori Counties, President Ruto noted that the government had, in the past two weeks, disbursed enough funds to HELB for lending to students across the country.
He also added that the State is currently finalising plans to hire 2,000 additional teachers for TVET institutions.
The head of state’s sentiments come after HELB CEO Charles Ringera on Wednesday told Parliament that approximately 140,000 public university students had missed out on State loans, in the current fiscal year, since the loans board had depleted its cash reserves.
Ringera added that HELB will now have to wait for the national exchequer to release Ksh.5.7 billion for it to remit the loans to the university students who mostly use the advance to pay for their tuition fees and upkeep.
“Currently we have 140,000 students in TVETs and universities that we have not been able to fund to the tune of Ksh.5.7 billion because we have run out of the budget that we had presented to the Treasury of Ksh.4.5 billion,” Ringera told Parliament’s Public Investments Committee on Education and Governance (PICEG).
He added that the State also failed to cede to a request by HELB to cover the cash shortage via an additional budget.
In the current fiscal year, HELB received Ksh.14.8 billion from the exchequer for the disbursement of student loans.
Successful loan applicants are eligible to get between Ksh.35,000 and Ksh.60,000 annually.
“Every month we collect around Ksh.400 million from former loanees which we add to the quarterly disbursements by Treasury to service applications by ongoing students,” said Ringera.
