More than 8000 eligible students at the University of Zambia (UNZA) have not been awarded student loans for the 2021/2022 academic year due to budget constraints.
Higher Education Loans and Scholarships Board (HELSB) senior corporate communications officer Chiselwa Kawanda said this is due to budgetary constraints.
Meanwhile, the board has awarded student loans to 2,481 eligible first year students at UNZA for the academic year.
Chiselwa Kawanda,the board received a total number of 10,682 applications, out of which 6,150 are male while 4,532 are female representing 58% and 42%, respectively.
Kawanda said of the total number received, 10,485 applicants were eligible for the award of student loans while 197 were ineligible.
She said the board further said the ineligible applicants are as a result of completing Grade 12 before 2017, non-attachment of required documents to the student loan application, having been already awarded students loans at other Universities and being non-Zambians.
“1,340 of the total awarded applicants are male while 1,141 are female representing 54% and 46%, respectively. Further, 1,040 students awarded are from rural districts while 1,441 are from urban districts representing 42% and 58%, respectively,” she said.
Kawanda said all the 39 applicants living with disabilities have been awarded student loans. Mwebantu
The report that more than 8000 UNZA students have failed to get student loans
due to budget constraints is of great concern. However, why do we call them loans when not even one student from UNZA ever pays back the loans? Maybe it’s more appropriate to use the term student scholarship or bursary. Having said this, it becomes imperative to find out about equity of the established criteria in bursary support for the needy students.
Bursary allocations to UNZA students should be equitably distributed.
In the past regimes, the bursary award criteria were largely not effective in identifying and benefiting the most needy students. This means we need to review the criteria for identification of the students with financial needs. Therefore it is imperative to educate those in charge of disbursements of student bursaries so as to eliminate ambiguities in the criteria.