Government plans interest-free loans for tertiary students

PRIME Minister James Marape says the Government will introduce interest-free loans to students attending tertiary institutions starting next year.
Marape said Minister for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology Nick Kuman had started work on the programme.
“That is something that we are preparing and our minister is tailoring the exact principles and policies towards how we will ensure this materializes,” he said.
“The cost of education consistent with the rise of inflation continues to go up every year and the burden is so huge on our citizens, parents and families who have got one or two kids in colleges and universities.
“Our Government will make intervention at that level.”
He said the previous government had been running the free education programme since 2012 which allowed more than one million children to be in school.
But Marape said as far as quality interventions were concerned, some parents thought it was a 100 per cent government obligation. “We will look into that policy also; without putting burden on parents and citizens, we will look into a programme where there is shared responsibility,” he said.
“The greater burden lies at higher education where one family is required to fork out K10,000 or K20,000, K5,000 which is a huge cost to the family. We need to address higher education school fee interventions so our government is looking into putting a programme in which students can seek a loan.
“They are not time-bound or bound by interest.
“They can take their life to repay their money that they would be getting from an endowment fund.”