The Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) has released a total of 12 million Ghana cedis as loans to students in tertiary institutions across the country.

A total of 10,000 students from 148 tertiary institutions in the country benefitted from the scheme which is the first payment being made after the official launching of the “No Guarantor Loan Scheme” on June 9, 2022.

Nana Kwaku Agyei Yeboah, the Chief Executive Officer of SLTF, who disclosed this to the media in Accra said, the amount covered payment to only first-time applicants for the first semester of the year.

First-time applicants from the University of Education, Winneba recorded 1,523 as the highest recipients, followed by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology which had 787, the University of Ghana had 511, with Koforidua Technical University recording 488 students and Takoradi Technical University with 371, respectively.

He stated that the lowest amount received by each student ranged from GhS1500 being the lowest and GhS3000 as the highest depending on the needs of the students after a means-testing assessment by the SLTF before disbursement to the students.

Nana Agyei Yeboah said the payment would help to ease the burden of students as they continued their education on various campuses across the country.

The CEO explained that all continuing students who were beneficiaries of the Students Loan Scheme in the country were paid in March this year.

He pledged to ensure that payment of funds to students would be made timeously to the beneficiaries to ensure that the students do not have challenges with funding.

Nana Agyei Yeboah appealed to beneficiaries of the scheme to ensure that they voluntarily paid back their loans to ensure that the Government got enough funds at all times to run the scheme for the benefit of others.

The CEO said the only people who had so far not been paid were those who had applied but had not completed the submission of the required information to the scheme and urged them to expedite their documentation and take their biometrics for payment.

He appealed to those who had not yet applied to the scheme to do so since they could also benefit from the facility which was readily available to all qualified students irrespective of political, social, religious and ethnic orientation.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government introduced the “No Guarantor Scheme” to ensure that tertiary students are able to secure loans to support their education without much difficulty.

To ensure that beneficiaries received their funds without many challenges, they are required to have E-zwich cards (a smartcard issued by the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System Limited for easy payment.