Barring defaulters from travelling most effective way for them to settle study loans
KUCHING: The travel ban on defaulters has proven to be an effective measure to encourage borrowers to repay their loans to the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional-PTPTN).
Batang Sadong Member of Parliament Datuk Seri Nancy Skukri said this was the result of an effective policy although some people accused the Barisan Nasional (BN) government of being harsh and inconsiderate for implementing it.
“I am glad that it does not take long for the new government to see a lot of good in the well-thought out policies of the previous government,” Nancy told the New Sarawak Tribune.
Hoping that the new government should not hesitate to continue it (the travel ban), she believes that those who wish to go overseas can have their status checked online before they decide on the dates of their departures.
She pointed out that the previous government had thought of all possibilities to make borrowers take responsibility for their own borrowings so that other students can borrow from the same fund.
“The travel ban was one of the most effective means to encourage borrowers to pay back their loans. Whatever the new government wants to portray, at the end of the day they have to think of the long run,” said Nancy.
On the proposed reintroduction of travel ban, she said the U-turn by the new government reflected the effectiveness of the measure taken by the previous government.
“As a government, sometimes we have to come up with an unpopular decision in order to achieve positive results,” she said.
Recalling her time as a minister, Nancy said although the PTPTN was not under her jurisdiction she used to receive calls around midnight from strangers desperate to go overseas and they simply had to contact any minister even at that odd time.
“A few boys who wanted to go overseas were stopped at the airport for failure to pay their loans and they appealed to me to instruct the immigration officers to let them go, which I could not do,” she said.
At a media briefing recently, the PTPTN management said it was also looking at several other options to improve study loan repayments.
However, PTPTN chairman Wan Saiful Wan Jan said Putrajaya would have the final say on whether to impose the travel ban, which he added was one of the most effective means of getting defaulters to settle their loans.
He said if the people are for it, they will bring it up to the Cabinet, but added that the decision is not in their hands.
Public consultation in the form of an online survey started on May 16 and will end on June 13 to obtain feedback on ideas for a new affordable study loan repayment scheme and measures to improve PTPTN’s loan sustainability.
The travel ban was part of a 10-point proposal presented to PTPTN during a series of stakeholder engagements that kicked off in December last year.
The Barisan Nasional implemented the travel ban in 2014 but the PTPTN repayment amount was still around 45 per cent based on the corporation’s annual report, and in 2015 the repayment rate increased by only 0.7 per cent.
Many Malaysians are now forced to seek employment abroad and the travel ban would prevent defaulters from seeking higher incomes that would allow them to repay their loans.
There are also suggestions that PTPTN should clean up its books and remove the “ujrah” (the 1 per cent service charge) so borrowers only pay the principal amount.
Other actions suggested are reasonable amounts of salary deductions for borrowers who had secured steady jobs. A hasher action is litigation against borrowers and guarantors with the possibility of bankruptcy proceedings if the loans are not recovered.
