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Sports |
Promising what is already a right
MOST of the candidates are promising
“free education if I win” and I wonder if Papua New Guineans are
aware that free education and right to education is not the same
thing.
Candidates as well as aspirants to the top job (prime minister)
are promising our poor people at the villages “manna from heaven”.
I believe some of the educated ones are also falling for this
gimmick. I don’t blame our poor people in the villages for not
being able to distinguish the difference between free education
and right to education.
If I may share, for the benefit of awareness, the right to
education defends the right to education and human rights in
education, and promotes enhancement of all human rights through
education.
As a specialised research project, policy makers carry out
assessments of the global realisation of the right to education,
provide input for education strategies and exposing and opposing
human rights violations.
On the other hand, free education or subsidised education provides
no financial cost to students attending any educational
institutions.
This phenomenon is sweeping through PNG and candidates are riding
on it.
However, the old jargon says “nothing is free”, and someone has to
pay.
So how will these candidates do it and where will the money come
from? Thus far, no candidate has announced how he/she will fulfil
the promise.
My question is if the right to education is a universal human
right, then why do candidates have to promise what is already the
people’s right?
The UN (and PNG is a beneficiary) defends and defines the right to
primary education for all citizens of the world but what our
politicians have mislead our people in the past was the so-called
free education and that is: “if you vote me, I give you this, if
not, I won’t give you”.
I have yet to see and read the policies and guidelines set by
aspiring candidates for the top job to define right to education
in PNG and free education in PNG.
Nobody pays school fees for the multitude without first analysing
the need of the labour market and job opportunities.
Anybody can be educated but without proper distribution of labour
or without providing any job opportunities for the skilled labour
is a waste of money on free education.
R. Laka
Via email
 
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