PORT
MORESBY: Opposition Leader Don
Polye has expressed concerns over the manner in which the government is pushing
for the resumption of classes in the three universities in the country.
Mr
Polye has called on the Prime Minister and his government to leave the matter with
the university councils to decide.
“The
Prime Minister and his agents must stop forcing the throat of the councils to
correct their own mistake.
“Let
the university councils to decide it independently to avoid a looming
compromise of quality of education and the government’s failure to disburse
operations funds to the universities,” he said.
When
commenting on the announcements by the universities to resume classes, he said
the Prime Minister should respect the views of the councils, adding he should stop
sticking his nose everywhere for his own convenience.
Polye
added that the Opposition doubted the financial status of these institutions to
fund their operations, in light of the country’s cash flow problem.
“The
government has been facing difficulties to process public service salaries on
time and to meet other obligations. We hope all goes well,” he said.
 |
| Opposition Leader Don Polye. |
Source: Press Release/Port Moresby/August 2016.
University Education and Education in PNG for that matter is the shared responsibility between different stake holders. The didffrent levels of government, the Educational Institutions, Churches, NGOs, Village Communities,and the parents/ friends and relatives of the child/student.
ReplyDeleteAll of these spend time, efforts and resources in educating a child/student. These responsibilities of these different stake holders are planned and programmed on a yearly calendar.We all know that development budgets targets are indicators of the achievement or failure of different projects or jobs, thus for Education, the achievement measure is by the number of students graduating in one year from which ever institution it maybe.Not only that but the level of education completed is also a measure of the achievement levels.
If the above analogy is correct, then, the University of Papua New Guinea and its sister University of Technology has failed in producing the output planned for this year. If the education year fails to be completed as it now,this along sets the country back by 1yr.
The impacts are serious because what is going to be the situation with spacing to take in the multiples of school leavers and non school leaver hoping to find a space in the two premier institutions in 2017? How about the different stake holders who want to get over with the burden of raising these future labour force? The parents and sponsors in particular, they have tremendous financial burden on them which they would not want to repeat.Even the students would not want to repeat what they should have had completed previous year.
If weighed against the benefits of deferring the academic year to next year, the loses would outweigh the benefits.
This then calls for all levels of stake holders to work together to complete the 2016 academic year for the UPNG and UOT and any other affected institutions by the last student boycott. The opposition should not be blaming and accusing the government. How it happened and who is at fault is beside the point, but it is important to beat the odds for our system and our students to have the school year completed.
This great nation belongs to the 7 million or so population and we all should be mindful of the destiny of these populous.Thank you: Andrew Rema Una