Many WUDC Malaysia Scholarship Recipients Will Stay Home - WHY?
Unfortunate and Unexpected Changes to Subsidy Offers Made to Scholarship Recipients
Hi all,
There has been a series of unfortunate events that has unfolded in the last week that has regretfully forced the Scholarship team to amend the scholarship conditions to 38 of our 60 scholarship recipients.
The Scholarship team has been operating under a MYR 100,000 grant from the Malaysian Convention & Exhibition Bureau to bring 60 scholars to Malaysia. Based on that financial capacity and based on the invoice issued by our travel agency on the travel costs involved, the team has offered cost-sharing scholarship agreements which included full flight subsidies to most of the scholars involved.
In the past few months, the team has struggled with government bureaucracy in disbursing those funds for the purposes of flight purchases for our scholars. As our team realised that we could not afford to delay the purchases any longer, we negotiated a credit agreement with the travel agency using MIDP as a legal guarantor for the usage of those credit facilities.
Soon after, the agency had informed us that the budget has been exceeded and billed us with the approximate amount of MYR 110,000 for the purchase of flights for only 22 out of the 60 scholars. The travel agency has attributed the increase in expenses to flight prices quadrupling in amount over the past few days as well as the low number of seats available from certain locations that has driven them to purchase far more expensive flights as those were the only routes available. Although we have some standing to dispute this billing, MIDP as the guarantor has signed an agreement to undertake all costs associated with this transaction and we are forced to accept this bizarre turn of events.
In order to make this program financially viable, the Scholarship team was forced to make the devastating decision to:
(1) Convert all full flight subsidies offered to scholars to partial flight subsidies,
(2) Retract a number of registration fee waivers.
(1) Convert all full flight subsidies offered to scholars to partial flight subsidies,
(2) Retract a number of registration fee waivers.
The only scholarship offer that remains firm for all scholars is free participation to the pre-WUDC tournament and the pre-WUDC workshop as well as free accommodation and meals during their pre-WUDC stay.
For scholars who will no longer be able to afford to attend Worlds, we have also committed to reimburse them for any visa costs they have incurred in their preparation for travel.
We understand that this is a highly frustrating scenario for the affected scholars and for that; we sincerely, deeply and thoroughly apologise to all of the affected scholars for putting them through such a situation in such short notice. For the scholars who demonstrated their kind understanding during this entire ordeal in the past week, we thank you for your considerate words and we could not be more grateful for your kind cooperation.
The result of this entire discussion will see 8 teams agreeing to the new cost-sharing agreement with a total of 38 scholars attending Malaysia Worlds 2015. We are still continuing discussion with a few other scholars to assist them in making alternative plans to attend. We sincerely thank all scholars for their patience during this difficult time.
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