HELB Should Stop Harassing Guarantors And Jobless Youth

Nothing hurts like a young man or woman approaching you seeking for a job and when you ask them what they can do, all they can say is “anything.”

The answers “anything” when you ask a young man or woman of what they can do if employed, is one of desperation and hopelessness.

Institutions of higher learning are emitting graduates into the job market annually but the job market is saturated. There are no jobs.

The absorption rate in the job market is at 2 percent, meaning in every 100 graduates, only 2 are likely to find employment. 98 are left without any meaningful employment.

The Higher Education Loans Board (HELB)

The majority of young men and women who join universities in Kenya are able to sustain their education through a loan from the government known as HELB.

Beneficiaries of HELB are required to pay back the loan after the completion of their education, something many young people cannot do because there are no jobs.

It is true that the loans have helped thousands of Kenyan youth to complete their university degrees but pinning them on the wall to pay the loan without any source of revenue is so unfair.

What does HELB want the beneficiaries without jobs to do? Steal? They are not in government because they would have looted public resources to clear off their loans.

Majority of young people often decide to join 86 percent of other Kenyans into the Small Medium Enterprises (SME). The sector is also saturated with stats from KNBS indicating that close to 450,000 SMEs die annually.

Innocent Guarantors

HELB has now come up with a way of sending threatening letters to innocent guarantors, asking them to pay off the loan.

In the letters, HELB purports that the “lonee” has “gone” into hiding requiring guarantors to pay or face legal action.

First, this is unprofessional and insensitive. There is no young person hiding from HELB. As young people, we have bigger problems to run from, leave alone HELB.

Secondly, the loan was not issued to guarantors but students. The guarantor did not, in any way benefit from the HELB loan. How can they be threatened to pay?

Thirdly, there is no clause in HELB loan that stated that in the event the students fails to pay back the loan, the guarantor carries the burden.

HELB should know one thing; it is not that young people do not what to pay. They don’t have the means to. They don’t have jobs.

Theoretical Jobs

The Jubilee government, when it came to power 7 years ago, it promised that it would create more than 200,000 jobs annually for Kenyans.

The jobs never came. Instead, they created their own jobs on paper lying to Kenyans that the government had created more than 830,000 jobs in 2018.

When asked where the jobs are, the good people in Jubilee government could not tell. They almost denounced their own numbers.

The government has failed the youth. The government has offered the youth a raw deal. They are looting public resources daily. Why can’t the government fill all the loopholes of corruption and use it pay HELB on behalf of young Kenyans?

Read Also: 67,000 HELB Loan Defaulters to Add to Millions Blacklisted on CRB