GH¢25m allowance paid to teacher trainees

47,000 teacher trainees in all 46 of the nation’s education institutes will get GH¢25 million in allowances thanks to a disbursement from the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF).

“We are working to pay an additional two months soon to clear all arrears,” Nuhu Bayorbo Mahama, the Chief Executive Officer of the Fund, told the Graphic yesterday. “The payment represents two months of arrears.”

Each teacher trainee now receives GH¢400 per month when allowances are restored; GH¢200 is provided as a food grant to the trainees’ individual institutions, and the remaining GH¢400 is allocated to the trainees.

According to Mr. Mahama, GH¢25 million was owed over the course of two months.

He clarified that the funds had been released for the 2023–2024 academic year and asked trainees who were still experiencing problems with the procedure to send in their information in order to be eligible for their allowances.

The fund has released allowances to teacher trainees for the second time in a week, after loaning GH¢20 million to students in various tertiary institutions around the nation.

In less than a week, the SLTF has released GH¢45 million in total.

13,500 recipients of the student loan throughout the nation’s colleges received payments.

The amount was for the second semester of the current academic year for qualifying continuing and final-year students.

With the addition of GH¢20 million, the fund has now disbursed GH¢60 million in loans since January of this year.

The month of August is utilized as recovery time by the SLTF to remind debtors to clear their obligation to the fund.

According to Mr. Mahama, the fund aimed to make August the month of payback more significant in order to persuade companies who employed certain debtors to make payments.

He noted that throughout the payback month, the Fund carried out a number of initiatives through which it was able to recover some funds, such as media appearances, interactions with employers, text messaging, and letter writing.

During that time, Mr. Mahama said, the trust fund raised, on average, between GH¢90,000 and GH¢100,000 every day. He asked individuals who were still in debt to pay their debts to the fund so that it could continue to support new students.

The CEO stated that the SLTF’s goal for recovering GH¢80 million from creditors was revised upward from GH¢75 million set last year.

Source: Ghanatodayonline.com