Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed announced on Wednesday 20th February that the High Education Loans Board (Helb) seeks to recover over 7.2 billion owed by 74,000 defaulters by use of law enforcement officers.
She asked employees to help in tracking down the culprits in an exercise that could start anytime from today.
“We are also going to partner with our law enforcement agencies to track down those holding jobs and yet are reluctant to stand up to be counted as responsible and patriotic citizens who honour their debts,” she said.
Those in diaspora will be tracked down by the help of Foreign Affairs Ministry, this was echoed by Helb chief executive Charles Ringera.
“We are having a large number of graduates leaving the country to work abroad majority who have defaulted,” Mr Ringera said.
This revelations came during launch of Helb’s 2019-2023 strategic plan in which they have projected a Sh90.7 billion budget.
CS Amina also noted that there was an increase of 795,000 college students in the current enrollment.
According to CS Amina, the annual HELB budget had grown from Sh4.6 billion financing 109,189 students in 2012 to Sh11.4 billion for 248,050 students in the 2017/18 financial year.
HELB also announced it start funding 24,252 students in Technical and Vocational Training Institutes (TVET).
