October 28, 2005

To all Omani Students in the USA and Canada:

We would like to inform you that the Cultural Division is still receiving requests for reimbursement without sufficient or proper documentation. As per our email dated August 26, 2005, the Cultural Division faces difficulties with sponsors when it comes to reimburse amounts paid directly to scholars for invoices that should be paid to vendors or schools. Sponsors either do not allow direct payments for scholars or require a lot of documentation that may not be handy or easy to obtain like the original invoice addressed to the Cultural Division, or returned checks from banks. Consequently, no payment other than allowances will be issued to scholars under any circumstances without a prior approval of the Cultural Attache.

To guarantee that such expenses will be refunded and accepted by auditors, the Cultural Division set procedure outlined in our circular posted and emailed on August 26, 2005. To reiterate what was included in that email and clarify it further, we would like to mention it again for better understanding. The Cultural Division requires the following procedure to be followed for any payment request:

1- No payment will be made directly to a scholar except for his/her allowances (i.e. monthly allowance, book, tools, and clothing, research and excess baggage allowances).

2- Schools usually send tuition bills directly to the Cultural Division for payment. If the scholar receives an invoice from other vendors, he has to send the original to the Cultural Division for payment. Please make sure that the original invoice should include the scholar’s name, beneficiary name in it and the purpose of the payment.

3- If there is an urgent payment, and the scholar needs to pay from his own resources, for example insurance premiums, exam fees, membership fees etc., the scholar has to obtain a written PRIOR approval from the Cultural Division. Without this prior approval, the Cultural Division will not refund that payment.

4- If the due date of an invoice is imminent or close, and in order to expedite a payment, the scholar should fax the invoice, whether it is from a school, medical insurance company, exam board or any other invoice that is due, to the Cultural Division fax number (571)722-0001. Either the Cultural Division, on turn will issue the check to the name of the beneficiary and send it to the scholar to send it to the beneficiary or the division will send the check directly to the beneficiary.

5- The scholar should then send the original of the invoice, that was faxed, to the Cultural Division address:

8381 Old Court House Road

Suite # 130

Vienna, VA 22182

6- We understand that there are situations when payment needs to be made on the spot or by the scholar himself. One of these cases is the payment of the visa fees issued by embassies or immigration authorities. If such payment is made, the original receipt and copy of the passport page that carry the visa in it should be submitted to the Cultural Division for a refund within three months.

As we mentioned before, the Cultural Division apologizes for any inconvenience these procedure might cause to you, but it is a required procedure by the accounting and auditing rules and regulations and the Cultural Division have no choice but to adhere to it.

With best regards and Ramadan Kareem

Sincerely,

Talib I. Al Salmi, PhD

Cultural Attaché