I am not into endorsing political ambitions and agendas of anyone. But two national development issues discussed by a candidate.

I am not into endorsing political ambitions and agendas of anyone. But two national development issues discussed by a candidate of the Moresby Northwest by-election as his policy agendas caught my attention recently. They are among some of our national development challenges that I also feel strongly about and have discussed them variously in my previous articles.
The candidate in question, Mr Zechariah Yakap, spoke at one of his political awareness events where he highlighted his two policies. I saw his presentation as posted on Facebook.

Mr Yakap’s first policy is about the need to expand technical and higher education by building more institutions to increase study spaces for the thousands of Grade 12 Leavers who do not get a tertiary education placement every year.
His second policy is the need to activate the Reserved Business List to stop the growing numbers of foreigners engaging in businesses and jobs previously reserved for Papua New Guineans.

I am glad that there are like-minded Papua New Guineans like Mr Yakap out there who see the importance of increased access for our young people to higher education and specific technical skills training and the need to protect jobs and businesses for citizens.

In my respectful view, the two agendas are at the heart of addressing the growing social and economic problems that are faced by our people and country. The two agendas are about socially and economically empowering our people so they can live productive and viable lives and contribute to the growth of our economy.

When better educated and technically skilled young people have something productive and meaningful to do in their lives and feel empowered, they would have no time to waste on wayward activities such as crime and alcohol and drug abuse. It is as simple as that. We will continue to face the social and economic problems we now face and they are only going to get worse, when our education system continues cast majority of our young and able-bodied citizens out onto the streets as “school leavers” who are not gainfully engaged due to lack of opportunities for further education and skills training.

The so-called “youth bulge” in our country is a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode in our face as a nation and the government cannot continue to turn give lip service and turn a blind eye. The secondary and lower levels of education have their rightful place in our society but I do not think a Grade 12 education as is delivered now prepares a young Papua New Guinean to make a head-start in life.
This is barring what students in the technical or agro secondary and high schools may be receiving.

The government must deliberately invest in the expansion of quality further education and technical skills training to provide opportunity and hope to the growing population of Grade 12 leavers and other youths who exit at the lower levels of education every year.

I regularly see many frustrated young people straight out of Grade 12 or Grade 10 giving their parents and immediate family members a hard time with their aberrant conduct. We as a society cannot exclusively blame these young disengaged school leavers as being irresponsible citizens as they are reflecting the national neglect accorded to them by the State not providing further education and technical skills training and creating jobs or viable opportunities for them.

Our future as a nation can only be better when the State through Parliament and the government process deliberately expand the higher education and technical skills training. I agree with the candidate mentioned above: strategically build more universities and specific-skills training colleges or expand the spaces of the existing ones so more of our Grade 12 leavers can be educated and trained and protect some jobs and businesses for Papua New Guineans.

We can create a critical mass of better educated and technical skills-trained Papua New Guineans who can go on to be more social and economically viable contributors to our country when we educate more citizens at the technical and higher education levels. It is just a simple numbers thing. The more educated and skilled people we have, the more productive and creative they can become.

Yes, we have over 30,000 Grade 12 leavers coming out of the secondary school system and about 12,000 able to find a space in our existing tertiary education institutions. The rest are out there in the community. What socio-economically viable thing they are doing, nobody officially knows. There is no data about what happens to the Grade 12 Leavers who do not secure spaces in the existing tertiary education institutions.

PNG lags behind in having a critical mass of citizens with technical and higher education qualifications and we continue rely on foreigners to fill the gaps. This deficiency was laid bare during the construction phase of the PNG Liquefied Natural Gas Project between 2010 and 2014 when the project operators had to bring in foreigners to perform basic technical work like welding that would have easily been done by our people.The employment of foreigners, is import of skills and departure of money that would otherwise have remained in the country if more PNG nationals were educated and trained were recruited for these jobs. In some cases, of course, Papua New Guineans flaunt our laws or just do no enforce them that allows foreigners to be recruited and employed in jobs that our citizens can do.

Our country will advance in leaps and bounds and socio-economic ills such as violent crimes would be minimised when people in positions of authority stop their incessant selfishness and greed using public offices and consciously investment in higher education and specific-technical skills training.