Kavelle Anglin-Christie, Staff Reporter
Police officers and officials at the Students' Loan Bureau yesterday try to sort out problems involving students registering to be interviewed for loans at the agency's North Tower offices on Oxford Road, St. Andrew. - RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
THOUSANDS OF students flocked the Students' Loan Bureau (SLB) at the Mutual Life Centre in New Kingston, yesterday to apply for loans before the Friday deadline.
However, what should have been a smooth process went haywire.
Prospective applicants who went to the SLB on the fifth floor were asked to go back to the ground floor to write their names in the security guard's book, from which they would be called for processing. Some students, however, wrote their names on separate lists, which caused much of the confusion. The police were called in to help control what became a boisterous crowd.
FIRST 200 APPLICANTS
A male applicant said when he arrived a few minutes after 7:00 a.m., he registered his name in the book "but because every minute we had to be running up and down, the students were getting upset.
"First they told us to write our names in a book, then some people started going around with a list for people to write their names on," he told The Gleaner.
He said each day the SLB takes in the first 200 applicants and those whose applications are not dealt with have to return another day.
A woman said she had been there since 3:00 a.m. on Monday, yet at 10:10 a.m. the first set of 20 applicants were just filing into the building and her name had not been called.
A middle-aged woman said she found it difficult to travel from rural Jamaica to Kingston every day for her application to be dealt with.
"It is costing me over $4,000 to come up every day to deal with this. I cannot keep coming up here. If it doesn't work out, then I will just have to wait until next year," she said.
LISTS NOT AUTHORISED
Lenice Barnett, chief executive director of the SLB, said the agency had nothing to do with the lists the students wrote their names on while outside.
"None of those lists were authorised by us. What some of the students do is record the names of those they expect to come, but don't turn up. So we will be there calling the names and no one responds," she said.
She said they used the list prepared by the security guard, as "no one can get into the building without signing,"
Mrs. Barnett said though they usually take 200 students per day, 250 were processed on Monday to accommodate the students. The deadline is still Friday, April 29.
