A Public Private Partnership Programme aimed at redressing critical skills gaps and requirements in the country.
A project wholly funded by the Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Introduction

Recent investments and developments in mining and petroleum (especially in the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project), agribusiness and consequent opportunistic industries and development initiatives has placed huge demands on specialised trade skills. For instance the LNG project alone requires up to 7000 workers with trade skills qualifications.

Technical Vocational Education Trade Skills Scholarships (TVETS) Programme

Introduction

Recent investments and developments in mining and petroleum (especially in the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project), agribusiness and consequent opportunistic industries and development initiatives has placed huge demands on specialised trade skills. Currently technical colleges do not have the capacity to meet the variety, quantity and quality of skilled graduates required. There is an imminent treat of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) skilled labour market being flooded by skilled workers from neighbouring countries which ominously threatens an outflow of benefits PNG nationals by right should trap. To responsibly redress this and to equip young school leavers the basic skills to meet diverse industry needs, the National Executive Council (NEC) decided (NEC141/2010), as an interim measure, to install the Technical Vocational Education Training Scholarship (TVETS) programme. TVETS targets school leavers between the ages of 18 and 26, to apply for specialised trades’ skills courses offered in Australian TAFE colleges in the state of Queensland.

Setting merit – based higher education is one of the major goals set in both 1997 Declaration about higher education in Asia and Pacific and the Declaration of the 1998 World Conference on Higher Education.  Many countries in the region have seen impressive increases in student enrolment rate.

In PNG enrolment has remained stagnant at 2% of the estimated 600,000 of the college age population of 17-24 year and the impact is weaker still at peri-urban and the district levels.  The weak linkage at the district level is manifested in the shortage of appropriately trained skilled human resource needed for PNG’s industrialization objectives.  This concern is receiving new prominence with the current emphasis on curriculum realignment to advance government’s need to intensify service delivery and foster impact projects such as the 30 year Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project, the main access roads to open up the hinterland for economic development, that is the Highway from the north to the southern region.  Similarly, the pressure for restructuring and reforming higher education is derived from growing expectations and demands of the government’s vision of income take off for all by 2050. Apart from improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services, institutions of higher education are confronted with a situation in which the principles of financial accountability and responsiveness to stakeholders prevail amidst the massification stage.