THE Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) will break ground early next year for permanent offices on Old Hope Road in Kingston, to be financed from its reserve pool of funds.

The bureau has acquired land to the tune of $22 million in close proximity to is current location in the north tower of the Mutual Life Building on Kensington Crescent.

The bureau said yesterday that plans for its own premises have been driven by the demand for more space to serve its growing clientele and high rental and maintenance costs.

“The decision by the bureau’s board and management is driven by an objective to ensure that our student-clientele are served in the optimum conditions for service.

We hope to achieve this by securing a bigger customer service hall to serve 3,000 customers at any given point, while expanding value-added call-centre and financial counseling services to the students,” said Lenice Barnett, the executive director of the lending agency for tertiary students.

The bureau, she said, at present has to shoulder monthly rental and maintenance costs of just over $1 million for occupying 11,000 square feet of space in the North Tower of the Mutual Life Building.

“At these high rates of rental, it is our considered position that we must invest in the future of present and succeeding generations of tertiary students by building a permanent home that is appropriately outfitted to best serve their unique needs”, Barnett said.

“It’s not about presenting a softer image of the bureau, rather this is a move in the interest of the thousands of Jamaican tertiary students who throng our currently inadequate offices at Kensington Crescent every year,” she added.

“The SLB, through innovative public education initiatives over the years, has sought to engage students into responsible and accountable behaviour by encouraging them to apply on time and to avoid the last minute rush.

“Those efforts have been met with varying degrees of success, and the SLB regards the use of funds from its reserve pool to acquire the appropriate office space for its operations, as a positive structured response to the perennial problems that accompany the annual loan application cycle and the unfair perceptions held by some, that it is not customer-friendly,” the bureau said yesterday.