Since the UPA government has already passed the no confidence motion in Parliament on 22nd July 2008, we hope that our beloved Minister Mr. Vayalar Ravi will come forward to help our sons & daughters which are fighting a lonely war for justice on a foreign soil with very few helping hands. Here is the first Open letter of the series of letters to Mr. Vayalar Ravi from one of the parents whose son is fighting it our all by himself.
Respected Mr. Vayalar Ravi,
Let us first introduce ourselves: we are Richard and Juliet Saldanha and our son, Fabian Saldanha, who was enrolled in the American School of Aviation, California where he was clocking flight hours to obtain his private flying license, Engine rating training and a commercial pilot license.
We had paid $40,000 in tuition fees, which was transferred in its entirety to the school at the beginning of the training. With the school shutting down, my child’s future now hangs in the balance.
Fabian has worked very hard in obtaining excellent grades to reach this position in his academic career. After successfully passing his +2 exams with 70% marks from Alva’s Pre-University College, Moodbidri, he finally settled on ASA to pursue his dreams of becoming a pilot one day. But we are sure there are other students like my son who are in a similar situation since ASA closed its doors.
The current plight of the 120 children is very tragic, and concerned school authorities like Mrs. Reny Kozman and the Principal Director Mr Manpreet Singh have all but abandoned their students.
Declaring bankruptcy was the next step in this sorry saga; and while the American courts battle this out, the lives of these 120 children and their future hangs in the balance. For parents like myself, who have worked hard to obtain the sufficient funds in educating our children and seeing their dream fulfilled, this comes as a very hard blow. We have mortgaged our properties and have no sufficient means to transfer Fabian to another school and scrape together another hefty tuition amount.
We implore you, and the concerned authorities to step in and rectify this matter. Maybe the government could help facilitate other aviation schools in the US to absorb these children and allow them to finish their training through a government funded grant. It is only through your networking, support and backing will parents like us be able to find full justice and manage to salvage the hopes and futures of these 120 children.
Yours sincerely,
Richard and Juliet Saldanha
Parents of Fabian Saldanha
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Secondcity,
Is the par 2 of the series coming up anytime soon?
echo yankee, over↗
(oh, BTW "over" means I finished my message and expect your reply, in yet another pilot's lingo)
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Richard and Juliet Saldanha:
Parents of Fabian Saldanha
I have no doubt the sentiment and plea expressed in your well composed letter addressed to the respected Mr. Vayalar Ravi, the Minister echoes the emotions of those students and their families caught up in this fiasco of horrendous order of magnitude. My heart goes out to each of you as well as those students and families who have been enduring this hardship since the ASA school closure in late June 2008.
May I ask if you ever received a reply from the Minister’s office for coming forward with a relief offer of any kind let alone simply acknowledging the receipt of your letter so far?……..thought so.
While I sincerely hope a meaningful relief is forthcoming from either government, it seems that to happen in this instance is far less likely much to everyone’s disappointment.
By now I hope people understand where I’m coming from and how I stand on the ASA matter, if not, please track back and read all of my 40 plus or so postings in the last 30 days. As you can tell from my writings I am firmly convinced what the duo Prince and Reny have done to the students amounts to a criminal fraud and they must be brought to justice.
I am also firmly convinced that the recovery of the lost student’s funds should be vigorously pursued by all means by instituting the most formidable consume fraud case in the history of Indian jurisprudence against KFA and the lenders of student loans as the accomplices in aiding and abetting to the Ponzi scheme then run by ASA.
It won’t happen overnight and no one can do it alone. It takes a collective determination and intention (will) to follow through until the objective is achieved. Never mind the government assistance, it’s not coming except in a form of meaningless lip services and dancing and skirting around the issue.
Why don’t you organize the ASA student family group in India by contacting and enlisting alliances with other families, consumer advocacy groups, legal outreach groups and likes all the while promoting media attention?
It will succeed eventually as long as the effort continues. Just expecting someone else to do it won’t work because nothing will ever get done in that format. Everyone must get involved and take an active role however small that may be in a collective effort for a common cause. Isn’t that what the great people of India brought down the Great Britain to forfeit its colonial territory?: I stand to be corrected but that’s the way I learned in my history class.
It can be done and to think otherwise you’re vastly underestimating what the collective effort by a group of determined people can achieve. Are the Indian banks and lending institutions and KFA big enough for you?
Press on and good luck to you all.
Sincerely,
Echo Yankee
ATP/A&P