Reimbursements under the government’s No-Fee-Stress policy will officially begin by the end of June, the Chief Executive Officer of the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF), Dr Saajida Shiraz, has revealed.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, Dr Shiraz confirmed that preparations were underway to ensure that first-year students receive refunds.

“We were prepared to start reimbursement from next month,” she said, assuring the public that the SLTF is not waiting for all applicants before beginning disbursement. “The way we intend to implement it is that we don’t expect we would wait for all 150,000 to apply before we start implementation.”

To streamline the process, the SLTF has developed a dual approach to validation and payment.

“We have taken the applications because we intend to reimburse, and of course, we need to take the banking information to facilitate that,” Dr Shiraz explained. “But alongside that, we also have another portal that we call the tertiary institutions portal.”

This system involves close collaboration with public tertiary institutions across the country.

“We’ve engaged them and then we’ve trained their staff, nominating two member staff from each public tertiary institution. And they are concurrently uploading the data of admitted students,” she said.

Validation is a crucial part of the process to ensure only legitimate students benefit from the scheme.

“Anybody can go on our portal and apply, but how do you validate their studentship? It is to cross-reference it against data you’ve received from schools,” she explained. “So in real time, we are also validating.”

However, progress has been slow from the institutional side.

“We are asking 168 public tertiary institutions to send us data, and as of this morning, only the University of Ghana out of the 16 public universities has uploaded,” Dr Shiraz revealed. “I anticipate that at the end of this week, many of them will would have uploaded.”

Despite these delays, the SLTF remains determined not to hold back the process. “It is not going to be very prudent to have to wait for everyone to apply before we start reimbursement. Once we start to validate, we will start to reimburse,” she said.

Dr Shiraz outlined a clear timeline for the reimbursement, saying, “First or second week of June, we start validation, and then third week, we are ready to go.”

She also urged students to act swiftly. “So far, we don’t have any deadline, but the quicker you register, the faster. If you want to be paid as quickly as possible, my encouragement is that you please go on to the portal and register your information so we can validate your studentship and then pay you,” she said.

The No-Fee-Stress reimbursement is part of a government initiative to ease the financial burden on first-year students in public tertiary institutions. Under this policy, students are allowed to register without paying fees upfront, with the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) later reimbursing the institutions.