Thinley Namgay   

The Institute of Professional Management Studies (IPMS) has given back around Nu 7 million (M) to about 120 people because their Australian visa applications got rejected.

An IPMS official said they’ve paid everyone what they owed. Some of these 120 people decided to go to court, while others didn’t, hoping they’d get refunded later.

Only last month, some people got their money back. One person said they were happy because even though it took more than a year, the company finally gave back their money.

Since 2022, people have accused IPMS of not giving back money for medical insurance and school fees when their visa applications failed.

Most of the visa rejections happened to people who took the Duolingo English Test at IPMS instead of the IELTS test. The Duolingo test used to be okay for Australian visas before Covid-19, but not anymore. 

When 49 people got tired of waiting for their money, they went to court in Thimphu. In December 2022, the court said IPMS had to pay back over Nu 4M to those 49 people.

The court said both sides could settle things outside of court, but IPMS had to pay back all the money within six months. IPMS had to pay Nu 72,000 to each of the 49 people, and they also had to pay an extra Nu 700,815 to one person.

After considering changing money values and taking away 10 percent for service charges, the final amount each person got was Nu 72,000, which was less than the initial claim of Nu 86,000 for each person.