By THEA RUTHERFORD, NG National Correspondent, thea@nasguard.com

The government has awarded more than $12 million in scholarships and loans this year, easing the path to tertiary education for hundreds of Bahamian students, Minister of Education Carl Bethel announced yesterday.

At a press conference awarding the All-Bahamas Merit Scholarship to Grand Bahama student Genymphas Higgs, Bethel announced a list of Ministry of Education merit, academic and technical scholarship awards for the upcoming school year.

The ministry has awarded guaranteed scholarship loans ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 to about 400 students, representing a total of $11.8 million. Eight-hundred and ninety students now benefit from the guaranteed loan program.

And awards to merit, academic and technical scholarship and grant recipients total more than $1.395 million this year.

"The government of The Bahamas is committed to ensuring that Bahamian citizens have access to the best education possible," said Bethel. "The initiatives that I spoke of recently to seek to transform the system of education in The Bahamas will, hopefully, in all of our lifetimes, make the system of public education in The Bahamas the envy in this region."

Nearly 2,000 students applied for the various merit, academic and technical scholarships and grants offered by the ministry. Eleven students received merit scholarships of $25,000 per year for up to four years; 16 students received academic scholarships for $10,000 per year for up to four years; another 16 students received technical scholarships of $10,000 per year for up to two years and some 80 to 90 students received scholarship grants for $10,000 for up to four years.

Students are required to maintain a GPA of 3.0 to ensure the continuation of their scholarships year after year.

The minister also urged past recipients of the guaranteed scholarship loan to repay their debts.

"It is important for those beneficiaries of the loan to remember and recall always that they have an obligation to repay the loan, if the program is to be kept sustainable," he said, "and right now, it is not sustainable."

Bethel said that failure to repay the loans would result in "drastic actions."

"If people do not honor their obligations very drastic actions will have to be taken in the national interest, and that is something that will be so unfortunate."