The long-awaited exercise to recover billions of Francs that were loaned to university students kicks off today at Kigali Serena Hotel.

And government expects at least Frw15 billion to be recovered in the process, according to Students Financing Agency of Rwanda (SFAR). The SFAR Director General Emmanuel Muvunyi said that currently they have in their database over 22,000 former and current university students loan who will reimburse the money.

"The campaign starts tomorrow (today) and several senior government officials who studied on these grants will champion the recovery by paying off their loans," Muvunyi said yesterday during an interview. He said that the database bears all the particulars of students who benefited from the loans and the mode of repayment will be deduction from salaries of the beneficiaries. "We shall be deducting eight percent from everyone's gross salary and we expect maximum cooperation from employers because they will be the ones to deposit the money on SFAR's accounts which will be made public," Muvunyi said.

Established in 2003, SFAR is mandated to introduce and implement a student loan scheme where students in higher learning institutions will be required to meet a certain percentage of the total cost of their education through the scheme. However, Muvunyi said that devaluation of the Rwandan currency especially for students who completed many years ago will not be evaluated.

"It is a contract between the students and government and devaluation will not be considered because it is not stipulated in that contract; so they will be paying the actual amount they owe the government," he said. The government started granting the loans to students in the National University of Rwanda, the country's first institution of higher learning, in the early 1980s.

To ensure an efficient mode of payment, Muvunyi said that the database will be linked to internet and everyone will be given a serial number. Meanwhile, a cabinet meeting that sat on November 2 resolved that university students will be required to pay for their tuition fees while the poor will be facilitated to acquire loans from banks. And according to the cabinet meeting, the ones to be facilitated to acquire loans are those that will be studying disciplines that are in line with government development programmes. When contacted on the decision, education minister Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya said that the decision will be effective next academic year.