Over 6,000 students applied for govt’s Help, says sacretary

The National Education

A TOTAL 6,633 undergraduate students in tertiary institutions throughout the country have applied for the Government’s higher education loan programme (Help) in this academic year, an official says.
Secretary for the Department of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (DHERST) Fr Jan Czuba said this year Help covered only undergraduate students in tertiary institutions.
He said the department planned to extend the programme to those who were studying postgraduateprogrammes.
Fr Czuba said K28.8 million had been allocated for the programme this year and from that, K24 million had already been used.
This is the first year that Help rolled out since its launch in May, with the aim of assisting young people, many of whom are not able to afford their tuition fees.
While it only catered for undergraduate students this year, DHERST has the list of names for postgraduates who applied for the programme.
According to Fr Czuba, the money allocated for the programme this year was paid to higher education institutions for the undergraduate students that had applied for the programme.
“We would like to extend this to post graduate and right now, funds are not available for postgraduates but Help should cover postgraduates, masters and PhD students,” he said.
“We have the names of students, once we get the money, we will try to process payment even this year.”
Being the first year for the rollout of this programme, there still needs to be more awareness on the benefits of this programme and the criteria to be eligible to apply. Fr Czuba said the remaining payment of the K28mill allocated budget for the programme would be made once funding was secured.

2 comments

  • Look at the title above.

    How the word “SECRETARY” is spelt. Some people still need to go back to the classroom.

  • Cheers for that initiative, since we the Tertiary students have be assist than, some of our final year student in the University have much quite a good kina of school excess fee in the school accounts but note being refund to the owner. The account staffs from the University always say politely that the University note yet being received the school fee form the Higher Education department yet. it is true that they don’t even received yet than why they are still holding to our excess money.

    thanks you
    by concern student ( University Of Goroka)

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