The vice president, Dr Bawumia on Wednesday 8^th June has launched the No Guarantor Student loan trust fund policy at the department of Engineering auditorium at Knust in Kumasi.

The policy is an initiative by the Nana Addo led administration and a promise made by the ruling party prior to the 2020 general elections.

In a speech delivered by the vice president of the Republic of Ghana, Dr Bawumia outlined the need for this policy alleviation for fresh and continuous Tertiary students to make tertiary education accessible to the Ghanaian youth especially the highly subscribed free senior school programme to make transition in education a smooth one.

The Veep expressed joy and stated with the no guarantor student loan “the unwieldy and restrictive scheme of students providing SSNIT contributors before accessing the student loan will be a thing of the past.

The president for the National Union of Ghana students (NUGS) Master Dennis Appiah Larbi pleaded with the government to expand the revenue allocated to the loan from three thousand Ghana cedis to five thousand Ghana cedis.

“Currently, three thousand cedis is the amount that have been approved to be disbursed to students, your excellency, three thousand is inadequate, lets us move to five thousand after this function”, he said.  

The union’s president emphasised on the delay of the disbursement and the interest rate attached which piled up till completion of school.

“The no guarantor fund has come to alleviate us yet there remains a huge challenge which is the delays and interest rate. Your excellency, do u know if the student borrows from the first year, interest piles up even in the first year, second year to the final year even before leaving school, this is a critical matter and someone like me from the rural area, we can’t understand why we should be paying interest for loans while we are in school, this must be looked at”. he lamented.

The no guarantor student loan policy makes it possible for qualified tertiary students to access loans to fund their education using Ghana card.

Source……. sompaonline.com/Eric Murphy Asare