WASHINGTON, May 17, (KUNA): Kuwait’s cultural office in Washington DC called Wednesday on Kuwaiti students to be cautious when receiving false telephone calls, e-mails, or internet messages from fraudsters who claim to provide services for a fee.
“We call upon students to be careful about receiving telephone calls or e-mails through WhatsApp application, where the senders claim that they are from the Cultural Office in Washington or by the Embassy,” the head of the Cultural Office Aseel Al-Awadhi told KUNA.
Al-Awadhi warned the callers might provide Kuwaiti students with the services they need to authenticate their academic degrees and “online materials” for a certain amount of money.
She stressed that students should “be very careful as the contact person uses letters signed by former cultural attaches or from the head of the cultural office (through photocopies) to camouflage and formalize the contact or the message.” She appealed to students to pay attention to and not to deal with anyone who claims working with the Kuwaiti Cultural Office or the Embassy and offers paid services for authenticating certificates or carrying out any other transaction.
Al-Awadhi explained that the interaction between students and the cultural office “is done only through the academic supervisor, known by the student themselves when they arrived in the US, and the cultural attache or the cultural counselor, using e-mail only, stressing that her “office does not in any way require any fee for the services it provides to students.” Al-Awadhi also called on students if they received a telephone call or a message through the mentioned previously application to “not hesitate to contact the Cultural Office by e-mail and immediately inform them.
Acting Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development Bader Al-Refa’e announced that four Ministry of Education projects worth KD11.723 million have been approved for fiscal year 2018/2019 under the development plan, reports Al-Rai daily.
Al-Refa’e stated the need to coordinate with the Ministry of Education for appropriate budget since other projects have been slated for implementation without specifying the cost. He submitted a letter to the Undersecretary of Education Dr Haitham Al-Athari with a list of all projects alongside the dates of commencement and completion. Other information included the nature, type and cost of the projects.
He declared the first project, which entails identifying and caring for gifted students “future scientists”, started on April 1, 2017. The project, which is part of the development plan, will gulp KD1 million during the year in review before its completion on March 31, 2020. Another major project is the international excellence center for secondary handicaps, which kicked off on May 1, 2018. The project is running until March 31, 2020 but the cost is yet to be specified.
