Stripping SLF debtors of ID ‘may be illegal’

PLANS TO strip people of their national identification card for failing to pay a long-standing education debt would be difficult to implement and could be a violation of their human rights violation, graduates have said.

The Student Loan Fund (SLF) is considering co-ordinating with the Interior Ministry to not renew the national identification cards of debtors.

A Bangkok-based company worker aged in her 30s who has an education debt said: “The nationality of a person should not be held hostage.” 

However, she praised the SLF’s attempts to get money to fund children’s education and said she regularly paid her debt so she would not be affected if the measure were implemented. “But people’s rights should still be protected even when they avoid repaying debts,” she said. “There are other things the agency should do first before considering this method.”

A Chiang Mai saleswoman aged in her 30s said the potential move showed the SLF was serious about tackling the problem and she would be more consistent in making her monthly payments.

She said she often skipped making the payments because of credit card and personal loan debts. She questioned how the proposal could be implemented without problems and suspects it is only a threat.

However, a freelance Web developer, who owes money to SLF, believes people should lose their ID card for failing to pay their debt for years. 

Finance Ministry permanent secretary Somchai Sujjapongse, chairman of the SLF board, who revealed this idea said the Interior Ministry is checking if the move violates any regulation or the constitution. He said the SLF would soon ask for the Social Security Office’s help in checking information about SLF debtors as well as SSO insurers, as the office helped with debt-collection efforts. 

Somchai spoke during a ceremony on Friday where the SLF signed a memorandum of agreement with 36 public and state enterprises and private sector organisations to deduct the due payment from the salary of employees who fail to repay the SLF debt. Somchai said the SLF wanted 200 public offices and 50 state enterprises to join the deduction-from-salary scheme. 

He said half of SLF’s loans were non-performing so there was a need to employ measures to encourage some four million people who owed Bt470 billion to repay their loans.

Somchai also assigned the SLF to study the feasibility of increasing loan ceilings for vocational fields related to 10 industries such as aviation in order to fully cover tuition fees, which is about Bt1 million a year for a pilot course. Currently, the SLF has a loan ceiling for engineers of Bt80,000 a year and Bt200,000 for doctors.

SLF manager Thitima Wichairat said the grace period – a two-year post-graduation repayment moratorium - was up for about three millions SLF debtors – some 2 million of who still owed money.

Half of the two million who still owe money repay cash periodically, while 800,000 were facing lawsuits for debt avoidance and 100,000 were undergoing debt settlements. 

The debt-repayment rate has risen over the past three years – with Bt17 billion repaid last year, Bt13 billion in 2014 and Bt11 billion in 2013.