The plan of the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) to name and shame loan defaulters continues to elicit mixed reactions from different quarters.
A parliamentary committee has now summoned its chief executive officer Charles Ringera to explain why the decision to expose the defaulters was reached.
Acting speaker Johnson Sakaja (Nairobi) has since asked the parliamentary committee, which is chaired by Benjamin Langat (Bomet) to grill the CEO over the matter amid uproar from the general public following the decision of the board.
HELB had announced its plans to name more than 85,000 Kenyans who are yet to pay back their loans. The agencies said that the move was prompted by the failure of the defaulters to respond to the requests to pay back the loans.
“Some beneficiaries who are in default have not responded to previous communications…. Therefore sustained default, hinders funding of other deserving Kenyan youth,” the agency said in a statement, as quoted by The Star
The senators have faulted the board after the reports emerged. The senators want the loans written off to give the beneficiaries peace of mind considering the fact that most of them are unemployed.
Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei said that there are other ways HELB can use to recover the loans from the defaulters as opposed to shaming them in public.