Rwanda Education Board (Reb) has recovered about Rwf70 million from students who benefited but defaulted on student loan scheme in the last five months.

This was revealed by Reb officials, on Thursday, as they received members of the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), who are currently following up on the implementation of resolutions adopted by the House during the analysis of the Auditor-General’s report for 2012/2013.

Desire Gacinya, the acting deputy director-general in charge of High Education Student Loan Department, said since they appeared before PAC in October, last year, the board has recovered up to Rwf70 million from the beneficiaries.

"There is a growing will to repay, despite challenges like not having a legal framework in place governing recovery and disbursements of the student loans,” said Gacinya.

The Auditor-General’s report had noted persistent challenges in tracking disbursements and recoveries for SFAR/Reb student loan beneficiaries. SFAR is the Students’ Financing Agency of Rwanda, which has since been brought under Reb.

Uncooperative employers

The Auditor-General’s report faulted Reb for not having complete information in the database for all those that benefitted from the scheme to facilitate recovery, a blame Reb shifted to uncooperative institutions where the beneficiaries are employed and the beneficiaries who lacked goodwill.

Reb has since sent various requests to employers to declare their new staff who could have benefited from the loan scholarship scheme but the majority of the institutions have yet to respond, officials said.

Gacinya noted that once the legal framework that sets modalities on how those that benefitted from the scheme refund the money, their work would be made easy.

Currently, Reb is owed about Rwf70 billion from student loan beneficiaries in total, but Gacinya said figures have increased with time as Reb gets more details on beneficiaries.

"It is possible that there could be more money to be recovered than the figure we have. Once all the facilitating mechanisms are in place, including legal framework and Management Information System (MIS), recovery will be fast-tracked,” he said.

Reb currently has 66,000 registered student loan beneficiaries.

The government spends about Rwf60 billion annually on the student loan scheme, including local and international scholarships. Reb spends about Rwf500 million per month to finance local scholarships alone, Gacinya said.

He said MIS is now available, although subject to upgrading depending on the prevailing issues.

"We introduced online application for scholarship scheme last year; hence disbursements and recoveries of the new entrants will be easy,” he said.

Gacinya said Reb is currently working with Rwanda Development Board to ensure that MIS, which is still under development, facilitates disbursements and recovery features for student’s loans.

New measures in place

Gacinya said Reb is ready to open up application for the loan scheme in time to avoid a ruckus that marred the scheme last year, including delayed publication of beneficiaries and mismatch of applicants under the Ubudehe social stratification scheme, among others.

This was echoed by the new Director-General of Reb, Janvier I. Gasana.

"By March, we will have begun registration of applicants so that by June, we are in position to announce the probable beneficiaries of the government loan scheme,” Gasana said.