Fee refund: NUML director issued notice

LAHORE:

A consumer court on Tuesday issued a notice to Col Saeed Ahmed Khan, the National University of Modern Language (NUML) director of academics, for April 16 in a petition seeking payment of Rs65,000 in damages for NUML’s refusal to refund a student’s fee.

The complainant, Ansar Khalid, said that after the respondent had advertised some academic courses in the newspaper on May 24, 2009, he got admission in the MBA (evening) programme. For which, he said, he deposited Rs45,000 as the first semester’s fee.

He said that he found out in August that the MBA (evening) programme had been converted into a four-year MBA-MS, without prior notice. He said he then asked the respondents to refund the fee as he was not interested in the new course. He said that the fee was refundable, but the director had refused to entertain his request.

He then headed towards the court, where he demanded the respondent to pay him Rs45,000, the actual fee, and Rs20,000 for mental torture. The court then issued a notice to the director for April 16 to file his reply.

Col Khan said that 34 students had been refunded the money.

He said that the complainant would have also been refunded the fee but he had approached the university once the admissions had been closed.

He said that the complainant had been already informed about the three-and-a-half-years duration of the course before he had applied for it.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2011.