The blame game continues in the controversy over a former Mahidol University lecturer who defaulted on a 10-million-baht scholarship, with the loan recipient accusing her former employer of not cooperating on repayment terms.
Dolrudee Jumlongras, now a researcher at Harvard University, said in an e-mail received late Wednesday that she always intended to hold up her end of the scholarship contract by either working for Mahidol University or monetarily.
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However, she said, she had requested a longer repayment period for the 30 million baht she owed - three times the value of the scholarship -- instead of paying it off in one lump sum within 30 days. Ms Dolrudee said Mahidol refused her request.
She wrote that earlier she had been unable to work for years due to renewal of her passport being blocked by Mahidol, causing her severe financial hardship. She now is married and a naturalised US citizen and doesn't need the Thai passport to work.
She denied that she tried to escape and dodge her repayment obligations. She claimed she obtained a personal loan of US$50,000 and sent it to her guarantors last April.
"I asked Mahidol to extend the deadline so that there would be enough time for me to find more money to repay," Dr Dolrudee wrote.
"Without leniency from Mahidol, my co-signers had to secure a personal loan to repay, and I have promised them that their loans will be paid off with interest after I can obtain the necessary loans in the near future," Dr Dolruedee said.
She hoped that her case "would result in a major change in the scholarship awarding and repayment system in Thailand, a system that would allow reasonable and beneficial alternatives for the awardees to repay their loans."
Dr Dolrudee received the 10-million-baht scholarship from the Office of the Higher Education Commission through Mahidol in 1993. She completed her master's and doctoral studies at Harvard School of Dental Medicine in 2003. The university approved her resignation in 2004, saying it had no authority to stop it.