That Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) is giving graduates only three years to start repaying their loans, failure of which their names are sent to Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) for blacklisting is sad and baffling. According to a report published in the Sunday Nation titled, “Jobless Helb defaulters in a bind,” HELB corporate communications and customer experience manager Wavinya Muigai said they list borrowers if they do not start repaying their loans three years after graduating.

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First, three years is not enough. Some graduates take as long as over ten years to get a job. Some do not even get jobs at all. The only path left for them after failing to get a job is to go into business. For one to start a business, he or she requires capital. There are several options. One can choose to get an SME loan from Bank or get M-shwari or Tala loan from mobile platforms. But once you are listed with CRB, you cannot get a loan either from bank or M-pesa and Tala. In short, by listing defaulters with CRB, HELB has completely closed all the avenues a graduate may use to get some income.

Secondly, business is dynamic in nature. You do not expect business to remain the same throughout. Sometimes the business is low and the owner cannot continue to pay loan. Or in case he or she is in formal employment, sometimes s/he can be sacked or demoted, making it difficult for him or her to make regular repayments. The idea of listing defaulters with CRB when they halt repayments for more than three months is therefore absurd.

Stakeholders in the education sector, CRB officials, relevant bodies in the government and even Right activists should come to the aid of jobless graduates who took a loan from HELB and are unable to pay. They should come up with a sober reasoning and let graduates not be listed with CRB. They need to take loans from Banks and mobile platforms to enable then start or rejuvenate their businesses. Better still, the government should find a way of creating more jobs for graduates so that they can be able to repay their HELB loans.