VANUATU WEEKLY ISSUE 758 ON SATURDAY 10 JULY 1999.
The Pakistani students who are left behind by their Australian lecturers following the closure of the Business Institute of Victoria in Port Vila, are accusing local authorities and the Australian Embassy here of ignoring what is believed could be a fraud.
Speaking to Vanuatu Weekly this week the students said "it appears that local authorities are waving aside the issue and have continued to ignore our pleas for assistance in obtaining student Visas and other necessary documents to allow us to seek other places to continue with our studies.
"It is very frustrating with the authorities here, because we've been to almost all the departments that we think would be in a position to help, including the police; but all they could say was, we are sorry, and nothing is being done", says one student.
Student Aurangzaib Naeem says he had been making appointments to see one officer at the Ministry of Education but the officer was never at the office every time he calls in to the ministry.
"Even when we agree on a particular time, he was never there when I went", he says.
Naeem says responses from their various approaches to the immigration authorities were no different.
"Since we are in Vanuatu and the closing down of the BIV was not our fault. We believe that local authorities could be more considered and should help in either finding another institution for us to continue our studies or help us obtain necessary documents to travel back to our country, since they had accepted us to study here in the first place" he says.
Another student, Rizwan Mansha says the Australian Embassy has refused to grant him a student Visa to study at one of the Institutions in Australia even though the Institution has offered him a place.
The students say they were surprised that the Australian Embassy had negotiated the release of passports and travelling documents of BIV lecturers that were briefly confiscated by local authorities.
"Those people were sneaking away out of the country without even letting us know that they had closed their operations in Port Vila - that is serious and should be ignored.
"The lecturers were directly involved with the BIV which was a company alleged to be originated in Australia, unlike us who are just innocent students who can't even be granted student Visas to study in that country" they say.
Meanwhile three of the students have already left to return home to Pakistan while the rest are expected to leave next week in a route that will take them through Honiara, Port Moresby and Singapore.
This is considered to be a longer route than if they were to go through Australia.
Each of the students had invested well over 10 thousand US dollars to study in Vanuatu.
"Our parents paid that money for our education and sent us here just to return empty handed" they argue.
Some of the students were doing their MBAs which explains the frustrations they have in not being able to continue and complete their studies.
The students are claiming that the BIV Scholarship was a fraud even from the start.
"We were shown the photo of the Asian Development Bank to be the Institute Building and the USP's Emalus Campus as that belonging to the BIV", says Naeem. The 16 unfortunate young men first learnt of the so-called Business Institute of Victoria last year from an exhibition at their Department of Education.
Local authorities have also expressed concern at the sudden closer of the Institution. But any further step from that is zero at this stage. It was earlier reported that Work Permits prepared by the Labor Department, were never collected by the BIV lecturers. No one knows why. BIV was the 31 project approved by the Vanuatu Foreign Investment Board early this year since the establishment of the VFIB last August. The Institute winded up its operations after less than two months of their establishment in the capital. It was reported that due to the limited time allowed for the VFIB to approve the project and have it issued with a license to operate, some of their lecturers were allowed to enter the country before their residential and work permits were processed. The BIV had also enrolled local students as well sev enteen intakes from the Asian region including 16 Pakistanis and one Vietnamese.
On her part, the First Secretary in the Australian High Commission in Port Vila, Susan Cox, confirms that the Pakistani students have approached the high commission, and that the high commission is doing its best to help them. "As far as the office here is concerned, BIV is an independent institution, and there is really nothing much that we can do or say about their operations".