School aims to address issues

By PETER ESILA
THE school of business and public policy at the University of Papua New Guinea is committed to bring solutions to challenges in the corporate world through its master’s programmes.
Executive dean Prof Lekshmi Pillai told The National the school has received more than 125 applications from the public service and corporate sector for all the masters programmes this year.
“The demand is always there, every year we are receiving more and more applications.”
He said the country needs high quality and highly skilled human resources.
“Especially, when the whole world is moving towards Artificial Intelligence (AI), which creates threat for low skilled and unskilled workers,” he said.
“The country needs to seriously prepare for producing time relevant and quality people to manage the corporate affairs.
“Sadly, we are less prepared, the Government must support all the universities in the country to offer masters and research (PhD) programmes on various fields.
“This needs significant amount of investment now, but the country will enjoy the benefits for long time.”
Lekshmi said the school had already graduated more than 400 people with master of business administration, master of human resources management, master of economic and public policy, graduate diploma in economic and public policy, master of strategic management and post-graduate diploma in strategic management qualifications.
“More than 60 are accepted for MBA programme and 35 accepted for draduate diploma in economic and public policy (GDEPP) programme. Other programmes together are around 10.”
Pillai said partnership with institutions to deliver programmes include:
lGRADUATE diploma in economic and public policy is supported by Australian National University under “Pacific leadership and governance programme”.
lGRADUATE diploma in corporate governance is supported by Bank of Papua New Guinea; and,
lBACHELOR of public finance and accountancy programme is supported by Department of Finance.
From June 2020, the school will offer bachelor of business and management (professional studies – human resources management) through Pacific Institute of Leadership and Governance (Pilag), formerly PNGIPA.
This programme aims at empowering public servants in the field of human resources management.
This arrangement has the support of the Government’s Department of Personnel Management.