KUCHING: Yayasan Sarawak has no problem with loan repayment collection, its director Haji Azmi Haji Bujang said.
He said Yayasan Sarawak has its own repayment scheme and as such does not have to follow the steps taken by the Federal government’s PTPTN.
“For our scholarship loans, we have rebates, so students pay one year after they graduated. If they want to pay immediately they can, but the grace period is one year after they graduated, and then they should follow the repayment schedule.
“If you have first class or GPA 3.5 and above, you only pay 25%, but you have to request for it. It is not automatic so you need to write to Yayasan Sarawak. You pay 25%, Yayasan Sarawak covers 75%.
“If your GPA is 3.0 to 3.49 you pay 50%. The same thing goes for medical studies, and others. It is all in Yayasan Sarawak’s homepage,” he told reporters yesterday after the presentation of Yayasan Sarawak scholarships by Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg to 40 medical students during a ceremony held at the atrium of the State Legislative Assembly yesterday.
“I don’t see people having problems paying back if they do well in their studies. They pay only 25%. Local universities’ fees are normally about RM20,000 to RM30,000, and 25% of RM20,000 is RM5,000 while 25% of RM30,000 is RM7,500. They can pay in five or six years but they have to do well in their studies,” he said.
According to Azmi, every year Yayasan Sarawak approved loan scholarships for a few thousand students for technical training, first degrees, PhDs, and bachelor degrees.
So they targeted to collect about RM8 million in loan repayments every year. If they can achieve about 70%, 80% or 90% of that, it is considered good, and Azmi added in some years the collections were okay, some years were not.
“It is a challenge for us. We have to contact people, talk to them to ask them to pay. I don’t have exact figures now,” he said.
In one year about 1,500 to 2,000 loans are approved.
He said if students study engineering at a private university, it is about RM100,000 per student. For 10 students it is about RM1 million.
“Of course that is the amount committed. We only pay the fee for that year, but the money is already committed for the whole course. So we have to be careful in planning. We cannot approve too many because they snowball. You cannot approve more a certain year and then approve less the following year. We must be very consistent in our approval. If there is an increase, it is just a little bit. We try to maintain the same figures all the time for scholarship loans.
“But scholarships are a bit tricky, so we approve about 200 to 300 every year. That is the Tun Rahman scholarship and the Tun Taib Scholarship.”
With regards to deducting the salaries of borrowers, Azmi said Yayasan Sarawak would not do it like PTPTN.
“We just stick to our repayment policy. It is 25% with zero interest for borrowers with first class honours degrees. If they have any problem they can come to us and we can reschedule their loans. We are very flexible,” he said.
“If they settle in one lump sum we give 25% discount write-off. Say their debt is RM10,000 and they want to pay one go we give 25% discount, with the condition that they finished their studies.”
Earlier in his welcoming speech, Azmi disclosed that the 40 medical students who were given scholarships were selected from a pool of 78 first year students through a stringent selection process right from their matriculation exams and they were assessed by Unimas through written tests and interviews.
He said the interviews were conducted by representatives from Unimas, Sarawak General Hospital, the Chief Minister’s Department, Ministry of Education and Yayasan Sarawak.
Concerning the 38 students who failed to get the scholarships, he said they would be given due consideration by Yayasan Sarawak if they required financial assistance in their studies at Unimas.
Under the scholarship programme each of the 40 students will get a total of RM500,000 from the first year until graduation.
The total budget per year for the scholarships is RM20 million per year. For the 200 students it is RM100 million (RM500,000 x 200) for five years.
