I have noticed some misleading or incorrect depiction in the media recently regarding the Students' Loan Bureau's (SLB) late payment fee charge. The SLB doesn't charge $250 in late fees per month, it charges $500. People need to get up to date on SLB policies, and, if applicable, their student loan accounts.

Added to that the SLB is portrayed as being heavy-handed in their approach, which is clearly not the case, because if it were, no one would make the mistake of thinking the charge is $250 when it is actually $500. Apparently people just don't care. The education minister has been portrayed with a seeming 'hands-in-pockets-nothing-I-can-do' stance. If that is indeed the case, I must agree with the education minister's position, up to a point.

Laziness

Common decency and sensibility would make it clear to anyone that the SLB doesn't print money, thus it can't keep lending money to students without others having repaid. In fact I think they are too soft in their approach to recovering money from delinquent borrowers. They need to adhere strictly to their policy of approaching guarantors when borrowers become delinquent, because in the society we live in now, delinquents may well feel comfortable messing around with a lawful business authority such as the SLB, or Government, but they won't want to mess around with the ordinary Jamaican guarantor who is approached to repay the delinquent's own loans due to their laziness or other unfortunate circumstance.

That said, the SLB also needs to put measures in place where they can accommodate people who genuinely cannot pay due to no immediate fault of theirs such as the thousands of young job seekers out there or people who just don't earn enough to afford to repay the SLB, and have a roof over their head and basic daily meals.

The $500 per month late payment fee is probably a reasonable step towards encouraging lazy, inconsiderate delinquents to start paying up, but it doesn't really do much for those who simply don't have the means to pay, except make their situations more dire.

One alternative approach would be to allow an extension of the 'grace period' where borrowers are not charged for repayments, but are charged interest on the principal they owe, until they can afford to repay. Of course, there has to be time limits on this. A viable additional tactic would be to extend the repayment period to more than 10 years, with a higher interest rate. That would ease the burden of too high monthly payments and might just increase compliance rates, and make the SLB a more viable agency.

I am, etc.,

JOHN SMITH

sensiblejamaican@ googlemail.com