Graduates given 6 months to repay
By SAMUEL BARIASI
STUDENTS receiving loans under the Higher Education Loan Programme (Help) will be given six months after graduation to get jobs and start repaying their loans, an official says.
Department of Higher Education Research Science and Technology (DHERST) secretary Fr Jan Czuba said guarantors would repay the loans if students failed to get jobs within the six-month grace period.
“The ones earning below a certain amount (to be announced soon) would be excluded.
“But the guarantors will still be responsible to repay,” he said.
He said the pressure on students should help them study harder and commit themselves fully to their education to get good marks and attract employers.
“I do not see why employers should ignore you when you have really good marks,” he said.
He said it would cost up to K280 million to rollout the Help programme a year, but the amount might vary. “There might be instances where families who can afford school fees might want to pay fees for their children.
“Help is for the ones who need it,” he said.
“The Government has allocated about K300 million for Help but at this stage we do not know how many students will be applying for it. We will know once Help is being rolled out.”
He said DHERST would be carrying out awareness about Help in centres such as Port Moresby, Mount Hagen, Goroka, Lae, Wewak, Madang and Kokopo for parents, sponsors, students and institutions to be well-informed about the programme.
7 comments
Do we have job guarantee for a 90 percent high scoring graduates in a single institution out off say 100 institutions.
Is loan repayment interest ratio fixed and stable and is not prone to be amended in the future, considering late loan repayment penalties, and other fees…
6 months is too short. And how would a subsistence family son or daughter obtain guarantees if no one wants to be a Guarantor. The Government should leave along the status quo and reduce the parent component of the fees with the equivalent of whatever saving from Elementary to Secondary Fees parents will pay
Is there any guarantee that tertiary students in Papua New Guinea straight after finishing tertiary institution secure employment opportunity within six months period. Please ask Fr Jan Czuba, has there any research done on that and are their statistics to prove what HELP have mentioned. We cannot go on implementing policies were research have not been carried out to show signs of higher probability. This policy will just be like the Free Education Policy
6 months to repay is not realistic for someone who gets K50,000 loan every year for 4-5 years course. What if they flunk they course and unable to graduate or find a job?
Even for someone getting K10,000 a year for 4 years. They have to be earning at least K100,000 per annum salary package to salary sacrifice 50% of their annual salary to repay their HELP.
What a joke! You are talking about a country where diploma and bachelor graduates roam the streets due to lack of opportunities for them to find a job. And you expect them.to find a job within 6 months and repay their loan? Good luck with that!!!
You say for us students to be responsible for our education and commit ourselves to studies… You only saying that now coz you never went through the hardship of applying for a loan at such a early age better yet your children too won’t be suffering from having to pay back vk a loan at such an unrealistic time frame given that employment opportunities are hardly advertised. The program is just another one of those trial-and-error program… Please PM think this through… You’re children at our age didn’t have to apply loans better yet you used tax payer money to provide for them… So don’t sit and act as if this is the way to Take Back PNG coz it won’t rather you are creating problems for us students
Not everyone who graduated in university or college in png start working with a month or two after graduation.
6 months is not enough for a graduate to find job.
Even it can took a yr for someone to find a job with respect to the course they took in college. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!
Comments are closed.