Council approves graduation

Education

By KELVIN JOE
THE University of Papua New Guinea’s 65th graduation ceremony will be held at Sir John Guise Stadium from Nov 9-11 under strict Covid-19 protocols, vice chancellor Frank Griffin said.
Griffin said National Pandemic Controller David Manning had approved the request by the UPNG council to have a physical graduation but in an enclosed system.
He said the university wanted to host the 2020 graduation virtually because of pandemic outbreak.
“As part of the pandemic controller approval, we were requested to host the graduation in a big enough enclosed system,” Griffin said.
“We would have control over people that are allowed to enter the facility.”
The University of Papua New Guinea 65th graduation was supposed to be hosted in April but due to the covid-19 pandemic, it was deferred until the council decided to have it this month.
Griffin said over 1,000 students in various schools and programmes were eligible to graduate.
There are about 400 students eligible to graduate in the school of business and public policy, around 200 in school of humanities and social science, 138 in school of natural and physical science, 112 in school of law and 280 in medicine and health science. Griffin said each graduand was allowed to bring three people to witness their graduation.
“In that regard, the graduation will be host in Sir John Guise indoor stadium,” he said.
“We acknowledge that the graduation ceremony is the culmination of the students’ journey through an institution,” he said.
“This physical graduation will allow the graduating students to celebrate the results of their hard work with families, sponsors and friends.” Griffin said everyone needed to maintain social distancing. He said the K600 graduation fee was the result of increased goods and services overtime to meet the cost of organising the ceremony and printing of certificates. “The impact is that we had to look within our own budget system and use some of the money that was not budgeted for.”