Acting Prime Minister Santia Bradshaw on Wednesday rubbished suggestions that the Student Revolving Loan Fund (SRLF) acted improperly when it made a $5,000 gift to the Eden Lodge Youth Charitable Trust earlier this month to assist needy families.
At a news conference from Ilaro Court, Bradshaw, the Minister of Education who is responsible for the fully self-funded SRLF, made clear that the fund’s donations to charitable organisations was nothing new.
Questions were raised about the gesture by Democratic Labour Party (DLP) leader Verla De Peiza who called on the Government to “explain, deny or verify that the perpetually indebted Student Revolving Loan Fund made a contribution to a politically connected charity”.
But Bradshaw described DePeiza’s request as “disturbing” as the SRLF has consistently made funds available to “help students to be able to meet their expenses in relation to tuition or in relation to books or uniforms. They have so budgeted those amounts to be able to assist”.
Bradshaw named the Barbados Cancer Society, the Ministry of Education’s initiative to provide devices to the island’s children for virtual classes and the Shoe Box Initiative which provides basic supplies and toys to the Nightengale Children’s Home as other recipients of the Fund’s donations.
The Education Minister went on to point out that the $5,000 donation was not paid to the charity “but was in fact paid to two businesses in Bridgetown”.
She said: “Those two businesses supplied the uniforms and the books which the children of Barbados who would have been the beneficiaries would have benefited from. I don’t know what is so difficult for the public of Barbados to understand about that.”
Bradshaw further revealed that this was the first of two requests the trust made to the SRLF for assistance that was approved by the fund after conducting due diligence.
She explained that the first request in 2020 to sponsor the Trust’s back-to-school programme was denied because there were no budgeted funds to spend at the time.
She told the news conference: “The Trust came back and requested additional assistance and the Student Revolving Loan Fund requested their financials in order to make sure that they were an entity that is actually giving to students, to get an idea as to the types of programmes that they were engaged in and it is on that basis that the board of SRLF felt that the initiative being put forward by the Trust was one that fit well within the mandate of the SRLF.
“So I want to put to rest this issue that funds have been misappropriated in any way, that funds have been applied in some way that it presents a level of mismanagement on the part of the Student Revolving Loan Fund but rather to say to the public that the Student Revolving Loan Fund is working well and that I would encourage Barbadians who have benefited from the fund to support the fund by paying back the monies that have been loaned to you so that other young people can benefit from those resources.”
The Acting Prime Minister stressed that the SRLF has not received any subvention or financial support from the Government since 2009 but has been financing its operations by loan repayments from its clients.
Bradshaw reported there has been a significant improvement in the repayment of loans. She said: “The delinquency rate has come down from 27 per cent in 2017 to less than 17 per cent at the end of March this year and the goal really is to bring it down beyond 10 per cent.”
Bradshaw added that while the pandemic has had some impact on the repayment of loans, the SRLF has been showing leniency where there are cases of hardship.
(SD)
