Loan Fund told to go after students

By The Nation

 

 

FOCUS FOR RECOUPING DEFAULTED LOANS TO SHIFT FROM GUARANTORS TO BORROWERS
 

THE STUDENT Loan Fund (SLF) was yesterday instructed to take all necessary steps under a new law to collect overdue debts from borrowers before taking action against loan guarantors. 

 

The law, which came into effect last year, gives the SLF full access to a borrowers’ income details, and obligates public and private employers to allow salary deductions to repay the SLF debts.

 

Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, director-general of the Legal Execution Department (LED), cited a recent case of Khamphaeng Phet teacher Vipa Banyen who faced asset seizure for signing as a guarantor for government loans between 1998 and 1999 for her ex-students, who then refused to repay the debts. 

 

She said the teacher faced legal action because the SLF followed the previous law that allowed officials to automatically go after the guarantors for payment when they could not reach the borrowers.

 

Ruenvadee said at a press conference yesterday that her agency would contact the Interior Ministry’s Provincial Administration Department to find out how many kamnans and village headmen had signed as guarantors to help youths to secure student loans, and find solutions to the issue. 

 

 

The LED however had no information about a Chaiyaphum teacher who had claimed to have suffered asset seizure then bankruptcy in the same manner as Vipa. Ruenvadee said the SLF had never sued any borrowers for bankruptcy.

 

Ruenvadee said that the LED earned more than Bt3 billion (Bt35,857,767,821) from auctions selling seized assets in this fiscal year’s third quarter (October 2017-June 2018), a 7.92 per cent hike from the same period in the previous fiscal year. 

 

She also said that the LED had mediated 18,129 legal disputes, covering assets worth Bt5,575,269,363 during the nine month period from October 2017 to June 2018, which is 87.7 per cent of all incoming cases. 

 

Among the disputes in this same period, 8,114 were linked to the SLF (more than double the 4,038 cases recorded during the same period last year) and the LED successfully mediated 7,1581 SLF-linked cases covering assets worth Bt880 million, she added. 

 

Ruenvadee said her agency would submit information to the Comptroller General’s Department so that some 200 LED officials could start the SLF debt repayments. She also said that the SLF had in the first nine months of fiscal year 2018 withheld the salary of 8,384 borrowers to arrange for the deduction of an obligatory repayment.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30351175

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-08-01

3 hours ago, webfact said:

THE STUDENT Loan Fund (SLF) was yesterday instructed to take all necessary steps under a new law to collect overdue debts from borrowers before taking action against loan guarantors. 

So now the loan issuer needs instructions on how to do its job.

 

4 hours ago, webfact said:

Ruenvadee said the SLF had never sued any borrowers for bankruptcy.

Seems that proves the point.

 

seems the general public also needs to be educated on what it means to guarantee another persons loan.

5 hours ago, bluesofa said:

So now the loan issuer needs instructions on how to do its job.

 

Seems that proves the point.

 

The SLF sounds "back to front", maybe the students wanted this to "just fade away" and were living "at the edge"

OK i see Thailand was different in loans. They first go to guarantors to get the money, just lazy to get the loaners to pay. The guarantor has this job, amazing. They KNEW about the new rules, but instead kept on going the old way, amazing. So now they can have court cases of people getting their money back, as SLF is breaking the law for over a year ! Wouldnt be surprised if corruption is working in SLF and all heads of SLF department should now be fired and go to jail for working out of Thai law.

Lot easier to go after the guarantors, they had to prove they had the collateral to sign. They're the low hanging fruit imo. 

about time they actually chased the ones that took the loans, seizing part of their wages is a good start but also seizing assets as well. There are many thais that seem to think if they dont want to repay their debt they can simply walk away, they need to learn that they are responsible for their debts and that assets can be seized or wages seized to repay them, guarantors also need to learn that by signing on they can also be made to help repay the loans if the students refuse to do so and have no assets etc to use

And for those who have left the country (like the dentist?) they should revoke their passports until the debt is repaid.