University needs maintenance

By JIMMY KALEBE
A MAJOR educational institution in Papua New Guinea is suffering from a lack of maintenance to its old infrastructures and neglect, according to its chancellor.
Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech) in Lae has old buildings and infrastructures that need urgent attention to meet the standards required, says chancellor Dame Jean Kekedo.
She said at the opening of the Department of Distance Learning (DODL) building at the Taraka Campus on Friday.
“This university is suffering very badly as most of our building infrastructure need maintenance and that has been neglected for a very long time,” Dame Kekedo said.
She also pointed out that Unitech did not have an isolation centre (for Covid-19) especially when staff and students had to travel out for work and return.
“Many of our staff and students had to take off days (at homes or outside) before coming back to class as safety measures and we don’t have a facility here to do two weeks of isolation.”
She said those were the issues that needed to be addressed.
The former building was burnt during student unrest in 2016.
The new DODL building cost K500,000 to build.
“This will be one of the innovative ways of students teaching without having them in classroom and the other is online studies.”
Dame Kekedo said the two innovative ways of teaching students was the way forward as the Government was asking to increase student intake by 15 per cent.
She also said that to cater for the extra 6,000 students, funds needed to be available to fix the information technology system to cater for online studies.
Vice-Chancellor Dr Ora Renagi said the university’s recent strategic plan (2020-2024) aimed to address the government’s agenda to increase access for those who had missed out on tertiary education.