Pay up and find yourself in the courts, warns the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) to students who have failed to settle their higher study loans.

Issuing this final warning, PTPTN chairperson Razali Ismail said about 80,000 reminders have been dispatched to offending students recently.

On top of that, another 38,000 legal notices have been sent to the first batch of students who benefitted from this government funding. This batch of students graduated in 1999.

"Once the legal notices have been sent out, students are given two weeks to respond to us." said Razali when contacted.

However, he added, only about 40 percent of the students had contacted PTPTN about settling their loans. Razali is hopeful that more students will respond in the early weeks of this month.

PTPTN will reconsider the legal case against these students who had contacted the agency, he said.

Razali said that the agency has been quite lenient to these students, especially the first batch of students from 1999.

He added that it was only fair that these student repay their loan to the government now that they have all graduated and were working.

"We have been very lenient to these students because we never pushed them to pay and only waited them to come forward and pay their loan to us, however, they did not," said Razali, who is also the Kuala Terengganu MP.

Razali also explained that PTPTN has been constantly reminding the students to repay their loans, but without any success.

Money available until 2010

A total of about RM600 million was loaned out to the first batch of students in 1999 and of this only RM270 million has been successfully collected from these students.

Razali said that the PTPTN Act will be amended in March so that collection of the study loans could be done through deduction of salaries of the graduated students.

The amendment will ensure all employers cooperate with the agency in collecting the debts.

Meanwhile, PTPTN's chief executive officer, Yunos Abdul Ghani told malaysiakini that the agency was now working with the government to look for new funders to continue funding poor deserving students.

"The government is still allocating money for us to help the students, at the moment" he said.

He added that PTPTN's kitty can last until 2010 but refused to reveal the amount that is available under its budget.

"At the same time we are trying to get as much money as possible to help the students, and hopefully more students will pay us back so that we can help the others," he added.

PTPTN was established to help students gain entry to Higher Level Institutions of Education in public and private universities.

This financial aid program was established in 1999 and is mainly focused on students who have gained admission to local universities but are unable to further their studies due to financial constraints.