KUALA LUMPUR: The new mechanism for the repayment of the National Higher Education Fund (PTPTN) loan is expected to be announced in the next few months.
Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching said the ministry was currently engaging with all relevant stakeholders.
“This engagement sessions will include employers and employees’ associations, youth associations, student representatives, NGOs and other relevant quarters, from January to June 2019,” she told the Dewan Rakyat, here today.
Teo was responding to a question from Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof (Petra Jaya) on whether the government has a new mechanism for the repayment of PTPTN loans.
On Dec 5, PTPTN chairman Wan Saiful Wan Jan had announced that loan instalments would be deducted from borrowers’ salaries, for those earning RM2,000 and above, beginning in 2019.
Just days later, Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik announced that the Income-Contingent Loan Repayment scheme would be suspended after it received brickbats, and that the ministry would conduct further studies before coming up with a new repayment mechanism.
To another supplementary question, Teo said the government has collected RM14.5 billion in PTPTN loan repayments up to this January, as opposed to RM20.9 billion it was supposed to have collected in total.
She added that collection in 2018 also dropped as compared with the previous year, with RM3.3 billion and RM3.9 billion collected, respectively.
