Saad Al-Dawsary Al-Jazirah Everyone knows how much young Saudi men and women studying abroad suffer. Those students on government scholarships suffer on several levels - financially, academically, psychologically and in matters of health. I would like to narrate the sad story of a student who is doing a PhD at an American university. His suffering began when his Saudi cell phone account was disconnected due to his failure to pay. He was busy with his studies and completely forgot about the bill. He only uses the cell phone in the Kingdom and so he called his Saudi bank from his US cell number and explained the problem to them. No one paid any attention to him and his request to reactivate the service on his cell phone was rejected because he was not calling the bank from the cell number shown on their records. All his bank transactions were suspended because of nonpayment of the bill. You can imagine how this person must have felt with no access to his Saudi bank account while he was living in a country which is thousands of miles away from home. All Saudi students on scholarships abroad desire convenient systems through which they can deal with their bank accounts and phone bills instead of the current difficult systems which make their lives abroad harder. The facilities that banks and telecommunications companies provide to those students will generate more profits for the banks and the companies. I am sure that all Saudi students abroad would use such new services if they were made available because such services would end their suffering.
