National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) was started on 1st November 1997 to provide loans to students who could not afford to pay for tertiary education. Back then, there are very few bank were willing to provide the loans. there are many students who have been able to pursue their studies because of PTPTN. Some of them even had continue their education overseas, not just in local universities. Back then, compared to PTPTN who charged for only 3% the banks were charging higher interest fees for students who opted for the loans.
However, on 2011, PTPTN has announced that they will reduce the interest rate charged from 3% to 1% but it is still a burden to the students. This is because the payment for the loan is required once the students get a job. Although the government has introduce several incentives to facilitate the payment of the PTPTN loans to makes it easier for the borrowers as those debts may deny the rights of future students to the loans but it help nothing with the debt.
Even though I feel sympathisize to PTPTN as they faced problems on getting the payments from students, but I see the reasons for the student's difficulty. As quoted from Movement Chief Khairy Jamaluddin, the 1% interest rate was actually a lot more than the actual operating expenditure of PTPTN.
"We were told that it only cost PTPTN RM65million a year to operate and to pay its overheads, so the 1% interest rate from the billions given out every year is far more than needed."
I believe that the government should do something about this. We can clearly see that many borrowers cannot afford to pay the loans as they just started their career and the last thing they need are huge debt to pay. Plus, some of them only got job on entry-level positions which makes it harder for them. By using blacklisting mechanism to the defaulters which bars them from going overseas and obtaining bank loans is not the correct way to deals with this matter as the government knows the best on what troubles the defaulters the most; the huge debt.
