The Chief Executive Officer of the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF), Dr. Saadija Shiraz, has assured Ghanaian students that all applicants under the “No-Fee Stress” policy are fully accounted for and will be reimbursed.
Speaking at a stakeholder engagement, she shared updates on the progress of the application, validation, and payment process.
Applications and Validation Process
According to Dr. Shiraz, the SLTF received an overwhelming number of applications from across the country.
“We received about 200,000 completed applications from students across Ghana. And we also received enrollment data from tertiary institutions to enable us to validate the data that we received from students. The enrollment data we received was for about 178,000 students. Out of this, the students who applied that we deemed were enrolled in schools were about 166,000.”
She explained that the validation process involved cross-checking application data against enrollment data provided by institutions.
“So far, we have validated about 143,000 students,” she said. “We have paid 120,222 students as of today. We have validated and yet to pay about 22,000 more students.”
Challenges With Validation
Not all applications went through smoothly. Dr. Shiraz admitted that some students are facing delays due to mismatches in their records.
“There are about a number of students who have validation issues, about 23,000 by my last count. And this validation issue span name mismatches, program mismatches, institutional mismatches, and student ID card mismatches. But we are working internally and with institutions to try and resolve it.”
Despite these challenges, she stressed that every student who applied is covered.
“Everybody who applied for the no-fee stress policy is accounted for. And we will be able to give you the detail, the data on any student and give you the details of what stage of the applications they are at. So you have our assurance that we are working to reimburse those who are yet to be reimbursed.”
Working With Institutions
On how the SLTF is handling the outstanding issues, Dr. Shiraz highlighted the important role of tertiary institutions.
“We have what we call a tertiary institution portal. And we ask every institution to nominate two representatives who were responsible for the quality of the data and who were responsible for uploading that data. So our officers are liaising with them when these issues come up. And in the back end, we are resolving these issues.”
She further emphasized the strong engagement between SLTF and stakeholders such as vice chancellors, principals of colleges, and student leaders.
“At every stage of the implementation process, we’ve been engaging with them. We’ve had separate conversations with vice chancellors Ghana. We’ve spoken to vice chancellors of technical universities. We’ve engaged principals of colleges of education. We’ve talked to health training institutions and then colleges of agric.”
But above all, she noted that students remain the main focus.
“Our most important concern is the students of Ghana, tertiary students. We’ve engaged with them mostly through their student leaders and student leadership, which is the National Union of Ghana Students. We’ve taken their input. We’ve taken their critique. And we are working to fine-tune the process.”
