Selection starts to pick 100 for Philippines

By DOROTHY MARK
Interviewing and screening 200 youths in Madang to study in the Philippines begin this week at the provincial government building.
Jimmy Hinch, who owns the Hinch Technology School in San Pascual, Batangas in the Philippines, said the cut-off mark for the recruitment was 100.
Hinch said priority was given to local Madang students to study trades like carpentry, welding, plumbing, and electrical and machineries.
“These courses will be useful to their own households when they return,” he said.
Hinch said all the girls who applied would be accepted while the boys would fight for the remaining 60 per cent of the spaces available after that.
The students selected would leave the country on the third week of July and study in the Philippines for two and half months.
The recruitment was the initiative of Madang governor Peter Yama who had long wanted to send street youths to study overseas.
Yama had been vocal on providing opportunities for youths to get skills trainings to participate in infrastructural development of the country and keep them away from drugs and homebrew.
“I don’t want to continue buying guns for police to shoot and kill our boys,” Yama said.
“I want to spend money to train those street youths so that they have a profession that can make them earn income and which can change their lifestyle,” he said.
Yama himself was a grade 6 drop-out in his mother’s village in Enga. But he fought his way back to be recruited as a policeman and served the force before becoming a successful businessman and politician.