Suspension of academic year false, says official
By SAMUEL BARIASI
A GOVERNMENT official is disappointed about rumours spread on social media that the Department of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (DHERST) was recommending the suspension of the 2020 academic year.
DHERST secretary Fr Jan Czuba said he was not seeking the state of emergency controller’s approval to suspend the academic year.
“Deliberately misinforming the public concerning DHERST’s position about the closure of higher education institutions in our country is ethically unacceptable and illegal,” he told The National.
He said somebody took one sentence from his interview with a radio station on Sunday out of context and posted on social media that DHERST was closing down institutions.
He said the DHERST was not using social media to communicate during the emergency.
“DHERST communicates with all institutions regularly on any decisions via e-letters.”
Czuba warned that spreading rumours especially during the emergency was dangerous and suggested that social media be controlled to avoid misleading the public.
“Words are very powerful because they’re equal to guns, and if you can kill people with guns, you can also kill people with words.
“DHERST’s position is to resume the academic year,” he said.
“I have written letters to the Prime Minister James Marape and the controller for institutions to resume classes and complete the academic year.”
3 comments
Fr Jan, Pls start the school ASAP. Act on this as it will affect 2021 new intakes because of limited space for first year students in all the colleges and universities. Do not mark around with this because it will have ripple effect will be hard to recover.
As a liberal citizen, my views are in respect of Professor Fr. Czuba’s position(s) and view(s). Should the Prime Minister allow classes to begin sooner than June or on a later date, I FIRMLY RECOMMEND that all tertiary institution MAINTAIN STRICT SOCIAL DISTANCING OF 1.5 METER in their daily interactions. , Staff and students be issued sufficient face marks and hand gloves, and hand sanitizers or equivalent of these. Supposedly, these observations become impracticably, then allow all UNIVERSITY TO RESORT TO ONLINE LEARNING APPROACHES TO COMPLETE SEMESTERS 1 & 2 respectively. Should online be the SOLITARY MEASURE, then ALLOW ALL HIGHER LEARNING INSTITUTION’s STUDENTS TO STAY IN THE COMFORT OF THEIR HOMES WHILE RESORTING TO LEARNING.
ON LINE LEARNING from my point of seen is just impossible at this point of time where government is digging deeply in to its pocket to fight against this unexpected or budgeted Covid-19 situation. If you are talking about on line learning for all tertiary institution, just imagine the total number of universities, technical colleges,business Colleges, nursing colleges and Teachers colleges including the total number of students that the government will have to purchase electronic devices for on line learning.
And I mean most of the students come from very remote part of the country where there is no connectivity. Anywhere My point Online learning is impossible.Fr.Czuba just close this year.
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