It is the administration’s pledge to allow those earning under RM4,000 a month to delay repaying their PTPTN loans
By MARK RAO / Pic By ISMAIL CHE RUS
NATIONAL Higher Education Fund Corp (PTPTN) borrowers have till Wednesday next week to provide their income details to be eligible for the planned deferred loan repayment scheme.
Borrowers who have outstanding debt that needs to be paid up are required to submit their income and employment details alongside other relevant information via PTPTN’s official website starting yesterday until the July 25 deadline this month.
The effort is part of the current administration’s pledge to allow those earning under RM4,000 a month to delay repaying their PTPTN loans. The period for repayment to the statutory fund is currently 12 months.
PTPTN chairman Wan Saiful Wan Jan (picture) said the fund is committed to fulfilling this promise within the 100- day deadline which is to end on Aug 17 this year.
However, he noted that the date of implementation of the deferred loan repayment scheme can only be announced once all the relevant information is procured.
“My hope is that we can announce how the scheme will be implemented before Aug 17…but the actual date of when we can start deferring the repayments cannot be decided now,” he told the press at PTPTN’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.
“The actual date of implementation will be based on the information we gather from the request we have done (yesterday) and also accounting for the fund’s own capability alongside a host of other considerations.”
As such, the implementation could occur as early as a week after Aug 17 or the year after, he said.
Until then, PTPTN borrowers will have to continue their repayments within the set timeframe.
The ad hoc request for borrowers’ income and employment details to be submitted directly to PTPTN itself comes after the fund struggled to obtain the information due to the Personal Data Protection Act 2010.
Wan Saiful said the act prevents government agencies from sharing information between each other but PTPTN has written to the relevant authorities in hopes of addressing this.
“We have written to the Ministry of Finance to request that the data kept by other agencies in the country can also be shared with us,” he said.
In the meantime, he said the fund continues to engage with agencies such as the Inland Revenue Board, Employees Provident Fund and Armed Forces Fund Board among others.
As part of its five-year 2020 strategic plan, PTPTN will be up for a review this year to gauge the sustainability of the fund.
Wan Saiful said this mid-term review will be implemented as scheduled to reassess the current PTPTN model which is overly reliant on debt to give out loans.
“We need to find some other steps that will be sustainable to provide financial aid to those who need to be helped but, at the same time, not rely too much on debt,” he said, adding that the fund will look at creating a new five-year plan to address this issue.
He said the current model will burden the government coffers which will spill over, and negatively impact the Malaysian public.
PTPTN is also on track to reach its target of RM4 billion in repayments this year but any change in the scheme can affect the amount collected, he said.
The amount repaid to PTPTN last year was RM3.98 billion — up 16% from the RM3.43 billion collected in 2016. As announced on June 26 this year, a total of 429,945 PTPTN borrowers were removed from the Immigration Department’s black list.
On Sept 30 last year, a total of RM6.84 billion was owed by some 410,500 PTPTN borrowers. Meanwhile, in response to reports that his appointment as PTPTN chair was political, Wan Saiful said Pakatan Harapan’s pledge to redress politically motivated appointments relates to government-linked companies (GLCs) specifically.
“We differentiate between GLCs and statutory bodies. PTPTN is a statutory body,” he said. Statutory bodies are established with specific goals, many of which have political agendas… they do not function the same as GLCs (whose appointments must be done on the principles of professionalism).”
Wan Saiful is currently the special advisor for Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik following the resignation of Datuk Shamsul Anuar Nasarah after the conclusion of the 14th General Election.
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