Students urged to pay back loans

Last week, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Information, and Communication Technology Mbeuta ua-Ndjarakana urged Namibia Student Financial Assistant Fund ( NSAF) student loan holders to pay back the loans. This was after members of the Khomas Regional Leadership of the Namibian National Students Organization (NANSO), declared that they will not pay back the NSAF loans.

“NSFAF has made repayments affordable to you, repayments of your study loans are based on the salary that you earn and start once your salary is N$30,000 or more per year. Payments start at 3% of your annual salary, increasing to a maximum of 8% when your salary reaches N$59,300 or more per year”, he said.
The fund has initiated a transformation program aimed at repositioning NSAF to provide more efficient and effective financial aid to students, and to be able to cover more students, as it has become necessary because the existing fund organization and systems had not kept pace with growth in funds due to the Loan Management System that was outdated and inadequate
Ua-Ndjarakana noted that students do not have to repay if they are unemployed or still studying. He however, said that they do have to provide written proof (in form of an affidavit valid for 3 months) stating unemployment. Additionally the repayment of the loans to the NSAF can also be suspended or cancelled by the board if the debtor becomes unemployed or the debtor’s annual earnings fall below the relevant threshold.
“By paying back your study loan you are paying it forward to someone else who needs it just as much as you did. The repayment is cost effective and affordable and it enables more students to benefit from the fund as the fund will translate into providing other opportunities for other students. The repayments of the loans means that besides the annual subsidies that government will allocate to the fund the repayment will ensure that the funding capacity of the fund will double and will have more funds available to award students,” he further said.
“Paying back your study loan is your duty and your responsibility to other students in need of student financial aid in Namibia.
Paying back the loan means that you are dedicated to sending more Namibians to school just as the NSAF is dedicated to the current beneficiaries,” he added.