Uni’s action over new school queried

HEALTH and HIV/AIDS Minister Sir Puka Temu has questioned the University of PNG’s interests after it took out a court order to stop the declaration of the School of Medicine a stand-alone university.
Sir Puka said the Government had made a milestone decision to declare the School of Medicine a new university to be funded and managed separately.
“The Government made this decision after returning from a trip to Cuba to recruit 30 Cuban doctors to serve in 15 districts in the country,” he said.
“The country has only 9500 frontline health workers and to make it worse, more than half of these health workers will retire in the next five to 10 years.”
Sir Puka said if the School of Medicine became a university it would produce 200 to 300 doctors a year, unlike in the last 50 years when the school produced 50 doctors a year.
Department of Higher Education Research Science and Technology Secretary Fr Jan Czuba said that the country needed more doctors.
Czuba said the Divine Word University was now offering MBBS programme specifically for rural doctors and there were plans to open a third medical faculty in the Highlands region.
However, a spokesperson from the UPNG medical faculty said that the university had taken out the court order because it was not consulted.
“The real issue is that the council has authority over the university under its Act, but the council was not consulted in the process,” the spokesman said.
“Initially, the idea was from the School of Medicine and the State and the Health Department supported it.”