HELB to take legal action against loan defaulters

The Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) has started taking defaulters with over 10 years of arrears to court to recover billions owed in student loans.

According to HELB CEO Charles Ringera, the government resolved to sue about 109,000 debt defaulters that have not serviced their loans for almost a decade. Ringera added that the board has already filed cases against five defaulters. The five were among seven that the board had targeted earlier.

HELB takes extreme  measures against defaulters who don’t service their loans after a decade. The new move is to help the board collect at least  Ksh 4.9 billion of the amount in default.

The loans board liaises with bodies such as the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA), National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) and exchanges data with them to track the activities of the beneficiaries and get them to pay their loans.

Featured image: Standard Media