Sunday, June 5, 2011

Mount Druitt's International Student's Request

Today I met a nice an open-minded international student called, 'Rabah', and she has really provided me with another lobbying issue to pursue on behave of all international students. She presented her idea and request to myself and I advised will see if we can seek support and feedback for this.

Here it is: She travels to Sydney university at Redfern, for her studies and if studying weekly - she needs to pay $6.00 for her bus trips per day (or $6.00 per trip), plus  $47.00 weekly train trip. If not studying weekly - daily train is  $8.70.

So if you do the sums it becomes very expensive for and other students. Working 20 hours per week, international students can not apply for concession public transport travel. As with a lot of international students, they tend to not be very wealthy, yet bring funds to pay for their living costs, sometimes raised by their overseas parents, so it can be difficult for these students to financially survive. She suggests that we we promote international students studying within Australia (and especially in Sydney), to be provided with proper concession rates for all public transport?

Since I spoke to her further information obtained - it maybe a little bit mixed, good and bad news:
A State Rail spokesperson advised me that if international students or students are working they may not be entitled to  concession tickets - yet they have to apply through the New South Wales Department of Education or the University's Transport officer. Although they maybe be entitled to concession  on Countrylink.

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