Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Higher Learning
Institutions Students Organisations (Tahliso) leaders have given the
government a seven-day ultimatum to urgently find money that will be
used to give loans to students who are yet to receive any.
Tahliso chairman Musa Mdede told reporters
yesterday that their research has established that thousands of
university students have gone without loans since April this year.
After presentation of 2014/15 budget in June this
year, the Higher Education Students Loans Board (HELSB) noted that
according to the money set aside by the government it would be able to
extend loans to 30,000 students only leaving 28,037 others in the sun.
In the press conference yesterday, Mr Mdede came
with Edward Markline whom he identified as among those who have not
received any loan.
“We cannot accept a situation where billions of
shillings have been spent on running the Constituent Assembly, billions
more are set to be used in referendum and at the same time the
government says it has no money to loan out to students,” he said.
“We ask top officials in government to understand
the difficulties facing students who have not been given loans. We want
them to act within the next seven days failure of which will force us to
make hard decisions,” he added.
Mr Mdede told reporters that they have decided to
talk to the media after their efforts to engage the government to
resolve the problem hit a hard wall. He noted for instance that their
efforts to forward their claims to the ministry have been met with
ridicule from some ministry officials, claims that The Citizen on Sunday
could not independently verify.
Although he did not go into the details as to what
they were planning in case the government missed the deadline, Mr Mdede
said they would organise students who are yet to receive their loans to
campaign.
For his part, Dar es Salaam Institute of
Technology (DIT) president Himida Elihuruma expressed his dismay over
government irresponsiveness to their calls on how it can reduce the
burden to HESLB.
“We have proposed that a new policy should be
introduced under which students who come from work and those pursuing
diplomas can get loans from banks. This would leave HESLB dealing with
only those who have completed Form Six. But the government has not
responsed,” he said.