Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) CEO, Geoffrey Monari, has singled out professionals in the private sector - particularly accountants, doctors, lawyers, and engineers - as the leading loan defaulters.
Speaking on Citizen TV
on Tuesday morning, Monari revealed that non-repayment is especially
rampant among graduates in private practice.
He noted that many beneficiaries have failed to honour their
loan obligations, years after completing their studies.
Accountants top the list, with only 11% of the 20,420
trained professionals servicing their loans - just 2,420 individuals.
Doctors follow, with 2,115 out of 11,501 repaying, while
over 51,000 students who graduated more than 20 years ago still owe HELB Ksh8
billion.
In the legal profession, only 2,644 of the more than 23,000
HELB-funded lawyers have made any repayments.
Engineers have also fallen short: just 1,594 have cleared
their loans, with only 894 currently making payments out of 24,803
beneficiaries.
“The problem is when people go to the private sector, they
start to become a problem to us,” Monari said, highlighting the difficulty of
tracing and enforcing repayment among self-employed individuals.
To curb the default crisis, HELB plans to partner with
professional bodies to consider withholding practice licences from defaulters.
This forms part of a broader strategy that includes employer
partnerships, credit bureau listings, and legal action.
However, Monari said HELB will show leniency to graduates
who left school within the last 1 to 11 years.
This group, owing Ksh46 billion, is considered to still be
transitioning into stable employment.
In contrast, teachers emerged as the most compliant, with
over 44,000 actively repaying their loans.
Only about 3,500 teachers in formal employment have yet to
start repaying.
The Kenyan DAILY POST
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