Golding proposes ‘no guarantors’ to access SLB loans
Published:Friday | March 13, 2020 | 12:36 AM
The next People’s National Party government will eliminate the requirement of guarantors as a condition of students being able to borrow from the Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB), Mark Golding, opposition spokesman on finance, has said.
Golding said that the caveat “was discriminatory against poor students”, arguing that data showed that recovery from guarantors of delinquent loans was relatively insignificant.
He said this new approach would remove the burden of families having to find guarantors and clearing the way for every student to access funding for tertiary education.
In his contribution to the Budget Debate in Parliament yesterday, Golding said that the PNP would make changes to the SLB loan structure to cap monthly payments at a manageable percentage of actual income.
“We will make borrowing a student loan to invest in their education something that students no longer need to fear,” he added.
He told his government counterpart, Dr Nigel Clarke, that he welcomed the adjustment of the commencement date for repayment of SLB loans to 14 months after graduation but noted that “this does not go anywhere near far enough”.
Golding asserted that the present structure of SLB loans placed the risk of finding employment after graduation, and at a salary that could sustain monthly loan payments, entirely on the student.
“It is not right that graduates who can’t find a job after struggling hard to earn their degrees find their names being published in the newspaper as loan delinquents,” he said.
The opposition spokesman on finance argued that it was the State, not students, that must bear the responsibility of creating economic conditions where students could readily find good-paying jobs.
He noted that many of the jobs being created now were low-skill jobs, paying low-skill wages.