Hitting the nail on the head in addressing attitude on COVID-19
University of Fiji Pro Chancellor Kamlesh Arya hit the nail on the head when he talked about what our attitude should be in this COVID-19 crisis. Mr Arya said “look at COVID-19” positively.
He is right. There is no other way. If we don’t, our negativity will prevent us from taking advantage of the opportunities.
Through his support, UniFiji was able to hold a roundtable conference at its Saweni campus in Lautoka for a representative group of the private sector under the leadership of Acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Shaista Shameem.
There is no doubt that COVID-19 has taken us by surprise and caused loss of jobs and business, pain, suffering and hardship.
But at the same time it has given us challenges to try new things. Innovation and creativity are the buzz words. This is the positive way and its encouraging to see leaders of higher learning institutions like Mr Arya advocating positivity. He has the full backing of Professor Shameem.
We need to take seriously a suggestion by Professor Shameem that those responsible for the National Development Plan and the Ministry of Education’s Strategic Plan need to meet and review the plans to ensure they are still relevant to current needs.
Tailoring our programmes
What they are proposing makes sense. Basically, its trailoring our academic and technical programmes to meet the current needs. It means modifying our programmes to produce qualifications and skills that are required in the job market.
Currently, we have a whole range of expatriates working here because we do not have the skillsets they bring with them to work on local development projects.
Its great that for a small country like ours we have three universities, the regional University of the South Pacific, the Governmentowned Fiji National University and the Sanatan Dharam Pratinidhi Sabha-owned UniFiji.
Unless they adapt their programmes to meet the changing needs, they could become irrelevant. We want our graduates to come out of university and get a job as soon as possible. Many of them and their families have invested a lot of money and resources into education and they want to see a return for their investment.
Some students rake up a big student loan which they are unable to pay because it’s difficult to get a job in their line of training.
The logical way to go is for the universities to work with the respective industries and employers and ascertain their job needs.
Then they design courses to meet those needs. This targeted approach is cost-effective for the institutions and beneficial for the graduates. Therefore there may be an urgent need to move away from traditional programmes that fail to contribute to lowering our unemployment rate. Mr Arya says UniFiji is trying to provide people with a rounded education so that they are able to survive in the current crisis. We need to take seriously a suggestion by Professor Shameem that those responsible for the National Development Plan and the Ministry of Education’s Strategic Plan need to meet and review the plans to ensure they are still relevant to current needs.
We have heard it being said many times in the past 10 months that we live in a new normal. The situation may never be the same again as it was pre-COVID19.
As such we must change too.
Cannot carry on with old ways
We cannot afford to carry on with the same old ideas and old ways of doing things.
We need new ideas. That’s the challenge that the pandemic has given us.
How we deal with it is up to us. We are seeing positive signs. New ideas are emerging and people are trying out new things and they seem to be working.
UniFiji has started an initiative with the roundtable and hopefully it does not end there – that we will pick up the ideas from it and run with them.
Expressions on focussing on agriculture to boost our economy were raised at the roundtable. They are music to Mahendra Reddy’s ears. The Minister for Agriculture has been working hard to encourage people with land to utilise it. He realises that with the fall of tourism after the border closure, agriculture is the go-to sector. And high on the agenda is food security.
No one should go hungry in this country because we have land to use and sea to fish for our food sources. It’s how we utilise these resources that will determine our capacity to keep moving forward. In the new National Budget to be presented in June, we hope to see an increase in agriculture allocation in proportion to the current focus.
Resolutions from the Saweni roundtable will be presented to the Government for its consideration. Let’s hope the Government will give them the attention they deserve.