BURAIDAH, 12 November 2007 — A group of Saudis, who graduated from an English teaching program that was wrongly advertised as accredited, expressed their frustration over the reluctance of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University to comply with a court ruling ordering it to reimburse the students SR25,000 each.
The Court of Grievances in Riyadh ruled last December in favor of 110 graduates of a two-year English teaching program that was advertised by the university as accredited by the Civil Service Ministry and the Ministry of Education, but in fact was unrecognized and worthless.
“We have been promised by Dr. Sulaiman ibn Abdullah Abalkhail, the rector of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University, that we would be paid back our tuition according to the court order before the end of this year. The date is now overdue,” said Sattam Saleh Al-Awad, one of the graduates, speaking on behalf of the students.
“We visited the rector of the university at his office in Riyadh last Monday. ... We were told that the reimbursement would only be made if the new budget has an allocation for compensations,” he added.
Abalkhail did not specify a date for when the money would be paid out and said he had no idea when the Ministry of Finance would allocate the funds.
“We have sent a letter to the Ministry of Higher Education which bureaucratically sends another letter to Ministry of Finance,” Abalkhail told the visiting graduates.
Feeling despondent, the students told Arab News, “After meeting with the university rector, we have come to the conclusion that we will never be paid back our money.”
The two-year program, which is no longer available at the university, was run by Al-Faisal Academy on the university’s premises in four regions of the Kingdom, including Qassim, Riyadh, Madinah and Ahsa.
The university’s reluctance to obey the court order led the students to file a complaint to the Ministry of Interior to enforce the court decision. The complaint ended up at the Ministry of Higher Education.
“We are in the right direction toward finding a solution to this problem,” Abalkhail told Al-Ekhbariah news channel last August in a program aired to discuss the problem.
“We are working positively on finding a solution for the 110 students, who obtained a court order,” he said, adding that the rest of the graduates would have to follow regulatory procedures.
Nayef Al-Furaidy and Sattam Saleh Al-Awad, two of the graduates, were also invited to the Al-Ekhbariah program.
Abalkhail confessed on TV that the graduates’ case was valid and pointed a finger at “other parties” involved. “There are some missing links in this case which are not indicted and I do not want to name them,” he said.
Speaking to Arab News over the phone on Aug. 25, Abalkhail said, “It is a matter of time ... the 110 students will be paid back as soon as possible.”
However, the students have now lost all hope of being reimbursed. “The solution, which was once very close, has now evaporated. It is just a matter of principle that we are advocating here. We just want to hold those who have made this grave mistake accountable so that they don’t do it again,” they said.
