NATIONAL PARLIAMENT OF
PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE TRANSCRIPT
(Inquiry into the Ministry of Education - Tertiary Scholarships
Program)
25 May 2007
(Uncorrected Version – subject to
changes upon revision)
Opening Prayer
by Hon Fono.
Hon Riumana (Interim Chairman): Thank you Leader and thank you PS and
officials of the Ministry of Education for coming to this meeting and thank you
too members of the Committee to present yourself to this meeting.
Before
we proceed on the proceedings as the Acting Chair of the PAC I would like to
welcome and thank the Permanent Secretary and the Senior Officials of the
Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development for appearing before
the Committee this morning. As you are
well aware following the sentencing in the recent Court proceedings involving
the Chair of the Committee the Hon Francis Zama, Mr
Zama has been required to cease his function as a Member of Parliament
including that as Chair of this Committee pending on an appeal in the High
Court. According to Standing Orders 72
(4) which reads, ‘If the Chairman is unable to present at the sitting the
Committee shall elect a member of the committee to act as the Chairman in his
place for that period during which he is absent’.
The Committee this morning elected
me to be the Chair of the Committee’s work and the committee will now continue
as plan.
I would like also to welcome the new
Law graduates who have recently joined the staff of the Parliament as part of
the UNDP Parliamentary Strengthening Project.
They are Mr John Taupongi and Mr Calvin
Ziru.
The Public Accounts Committee’s
function is to review and examine Public Expenditure as part of the overall oversight
functions of the parliament. The Auditor
General has tabled eight (8) Parliamentary Reports in relation to expenditure
by particular government department.
This morning we will be enquiring
into this special Audit Report into the affairs of the Ministry of Education
and Human Resources Development in Tertiary Scholarships Program in which there
were 48 recommendations. Before the
Committee commence its questioning I would like to invite
the Permanent Secretary to make an opening statement to the Committee.
Mr B Anga (PS): Thank you very much Chair. Also on behalf of my colleagues from the
Ministry of Education I would like to congratulate you for your appointment as
the Interim Chair of the Committee and we believe that you will do your best
with the support of the Members. We
really accept the objectives of the
We were privilege and happy that the
Audit has undertaken a review of the Unit itself because we perceive that Audit
has a means of assisting the Ministry and government in general to ensure that
the funds and also the procedures and the Ministry’s system of this Unit is
adhered to and also point us to the direction of correction. So we do not see it as an audit to find
faults but rather we see it as a means of helping us build the capacity and
also looking at ways which we can advance the system and also the activities of
not only the Unit but the Ministry of Education in its overall portfolio and objectives.
I
wish to make some general remarks about what we have done verbally in our
response to some of the issues which have been highlighted in the report and then
may be as you have rightly said Chair then we will allow some opportunity for
my colleagues to add few comments or even the Members of the Committee and
yourself Chair to make few observations.
We
appreciate the recommendations in light of the audit which has undertaken and
under the letter of arrangement with EU and SIG ANZ Aid which was signed last
month, we already engaged or indicated in that letter of arrangement that there
should be a development of a Tertiary policy, which will guide this
sub-sector. It is an important
sub-sector of an education system because when we have all our students coming
up to our normal system obviously at the top of the spectrum there must be some
assistance or some support rendered to our citizens as it is an important
sector for us. Now that we have policies
in the various sub-sectors, we have policies in Secondary and Primary. We saw it also fitting that should be a
policy to guide the Tertiary services or the Tertiary education in our own
system, so we have a plan to formulate a policy to guide this sub-sector. We have also in draft some of the guidelines
which will help the Unit and also the Ministry to ensure that there are right
procedures, right processes to be adhered to.
In
our recruitment, many of these issues were obvious because of lack of capacity
in the National Training Unit. At one
time we only have three officers and they have to look after almost 1,000
students including our in country students studying in country at USP and also
our pre-service teachers. So it is our
priority that with the Public Service there should be a proper recruitment and
at this stage we now have a full team in the National Training Unit. We have now a total of six (6) and all of
them are now at post, so it would help us now to respond to some of the issues
which have been highlighted in the report.
We also in our priority to recruit people with the Accounts Unit so that
there is a closer collaboration with the National Training Unit and the
Accounts so that the system with the financial resources are
catered for or accountant for properly for that. We are hoping sometime later in the year that
we could secure technical assistance to help the activities or the plans of
this Unit. I will allow my colleagues to
talk about that a bit later but in the National Training Unit we now have a
program which we call a scholar. It is
program which will help us to manage the procedures and the processes which we
have there.
In
the Accounts Unit we are slowly improving our accounts system to be compactable
with the ‘Mind Your Own Business’ (MYOB) and hopefully to go on to the macro pay
which will then be more compactable with the system down at the Ministry of
Finance.
In
our visits to the institutions we felt that may be we should ensure that the
Accounts and Training Units Staff should go together rather than only the NTU
personnel visits our students because they will then be concentrating on the
academic aspects of the students and not so much on the financial aspect of
that so we are proposing that whenever we visit our students in our various
institutions, we should allow both the Accounts Section and also the staff of
the NTU should go together as a team and where possible may also to go with the
Minister when he/she attends to the Council Meeting. So those are my initial remarks generally to
respond to some of the concerns or recommendations which have been highlighted
in the report.
Interim Chairman: As you have said can I ask your officials to
make comments.
Mr B Anga
(PS): Thank you Chair,
may be I invite Rose to say a few comments about the progress of the Scholar
program which we have in the NTU.
Ms Rose (Acting Director NTU): Thank you Chair and thank you PS. I am here on behalf of the Director of NTU he
is on leave at the moment. I thank PS
for inviting me to attend on his behalf.
Yes, we have a scholar program in
progress at the moment and this scholar program is set up in our office to take
care of the new applications for SIG scholarships. The scholar program helps us after we receive
the applications on SIG scholarship. We
input the data into the system after the closing date. I do all the input to the data system and
that system helps us to sort out the records or the reports of each individual
application and this will help us to produce the reports for the National
Training Committee for the Selection Board for the Scholarship progress. At the moment we have not started inputting
the data because our closing date is next week by 31st of May
2007. All applications should be
submitted to the NTU for data processing and we give them code numbers before
we pass them to the Public Service for the public servants and to Labour for other organizations and to Teaching Service Commission
for Teachers who have applied for SIG scholarships. From this scholar system this will also help
us to quickly produce the necessary reports for which programs people have
applied for the National Training Committee to do their screening properly in
order according to the criteria that we have in place before us. I think that is a very brief report on the
scholar system at the moment.
Interim Chairman: Thank you PS and the officials for your
explanation and deliberation. Before the
Committee deliberates further on your report and on your explanation, we all
know education is very important for
Mr B Anga
(PS): In the scholar program as alluded
to earlier there are reports which will be derived from the input. One of the reports will show how many
students are coming from certain province, how many applicants are undertaking
certain programs, so it will be devised by that number against their provinces
by provinces, their programs by programs so the various reports will kind of
reflect that information when it is completed.
There are various reports which will come about the system which we are
currently installing in the Unit. So that type of information is readily available when the system is
up running.
Hon Fono: Thank you PS for your introduction and your
Acting Director of NTU. As you know in
the report, part of the overall recommendation is the need to develop this
Tertiary Scholarship policy which the PS has mentioned that you have just had a
TA to help him to do that, how will you communicate to that or will you be
consulting the various stakeholders to contribute towards that policy and will
you do that?
Mr B Anga
(PS): We are here to identify the TA
(Technical Advisor) but our plan is as soon as we have a draft then we can
consult different stakeholders may be through a focus group or may be through
some informal meetings at some stages, our consultation will be even our
institution, so we will take different approaches to ensure that many of our
stakeholders or even most of them are involve in the formulation of that policy. But in our view, it is best that we come up
with a draft so that we introduce it to the stakeholders and they can think of
something, which at least we have some grounds for them to improve on, rather
then just leaving it too open or too flexible that people will put in ideas
here and there, but may be if we come up with a draft and then allow different
stakeholders to make observations or make comments on the drafts that we
have. So when that draft is ready what
we can do is that we can organize a consultation meeting and invite people to
come to that meeting and make their observations, remarks or even we can have
audience with the management of our own college of our education or even
Tertiary institutions in PNG or Fiji or even invite our development partners
how do they perceive that policy working best for Solomon Islands, so we have
that in mind some forms of consultation which we would like to encourage people
to participate in those meetings.
Hon Fono: I understand successive governments have put
in place a manpower policy which also base on that drawn up manpower training
program or plan which used to be under the Ministry of National Planning, is
that still in place or how close have you been in consultation with Planning to
see that the manpower needs of the country is adequately catered for under this
new Tertiary scholarship?
Mr B Anga
(PS): We have been in close consultation
with the Ministry of Planning as you might have learnt that, that Unit is no
longer active in the Ministry of Planning because of the change of
Portfolios. But as the Ministry
responsible for human resources development, what we have done is that we have
consulted the World Bank and ANZAID and they have undertaken a National Skills
Training Survey, which is looking at the people not only coming from
institutions but also our workforce and that report we hope that it will help
us to formulate a human resource or manpower planning for the country because
it is more entailing not only to their graduates but also to the workforce, so
we are looking at the national plan. The
World Bank have expressed interest to come back in July and also supported the ANZAID
so there is a follow up on their survey and we hope that upon their return they
would help us to formulate a manpower plan for human resources development plan
for the country and also look at the priorities of the institutions. In this case we are looking towards the
private sector as one of the important stakeholders to help us ensure that the
right skills or the right people are available in the private sector to grow
the economic and also in the public sector ensuring that the right people or
the right level of resources are available both in the private sector and also
public sector, so that when we combine the efforts it will have some impact not
only on human resources but also on the objectives and the activities of the
institutions which are expected to grow our economy. So with the assistance from the World Bank
and ANZAID there is the potential to develop or to revisit the manpower
development of our country.
Hon Koli: As we are looking to this new Tertiary
Scholarship policy program, I would just like to reiterate may be I have
already make mention but I just want to pose a question, how do you communicate
with other stakeholders in terms of informing them of the Ministry’s Tertiary
Scholarship policy? For instance, how do
the private sector and the pre-service and the in-service applicants be informed of the new policy?
Mr B Anga
(PS): Currently, we are using different focal
points in the different sectors like applications for private sector they are
channel through the Ministry of Commerce, Labour
Division. For the public servants it is
channel through the Ministry of Public Service.
Our own Ministry is responsible for our Teachers and also the Unit is
responsible for the applications of Pre-service. So these are channels which we will also use
in the exchange of the policy when it is ready as starting point for our
consultation that I have mentioned earlier.
Interim Chairman: One of the government policies is the bottom
up approach policy. Is your training program
in line with this bottom up approach of the government because when we talk
about the bottom up approach we are talking about the activities in the rural
areas? So is your training program in
line with this policy?
Mr B Anga
(PS): As I have just referred to earlier,
we have this survey of the public and private sector and they have indicated
areas of areas where requires skills and this is skills throughout the
workforce, so our training will also be geared towards people in the private
sector as well as people in the public sector.
We are also mindful of the services provided by our Rural Training Centres as you know there are at least two types of Rural
Training Centres.
One is called Community Based Training Centres
and these are trainings which are provided to the community to equip them which
are live skills, farming and various skills which will help communities to
develop or participate in the economy.
The other is obviously the trainings which are geared or bend towards
the formal qualification like certificate in carpentry, certificate in farming but
our approach to help our rural dwellers is through our rural training centres, and that is where we believe that it is an
important avenue to help us ensure that the opportunities are also given to
people who participate in our rural training centres.
So
next year there is a big investment by European Union to strengthen our
technical and vocational education (RTCs) which is a
big program, we are in the process of finalizing that program and we hope that
it will come and of course hopefully next we can start that particular program
but it will a big investment to help rural dwellers access some of the
appropriate skills to help them improve their live.
Hon Fono: One of the recommendations of the report stresses
the importance of adherence to the financial instructions by Accounting Officers, can the Committee be informed of any steps taken
by the Ministry to ensure that the Accounting Officers are well aware of the
usage of the financial instructions?
Mr B Anga
(PS): It could be that the report might
not be very inclusive or need not explore the full or the real situation in the
ministry, so what we are doing is that we are ensuring that the Accounting
Officer should be the person who should be signing the requisitions and the cheques if it comes under the MEHRD Trust Account. In his absence he must authorize my Under
Secretary so that measure is in place so that there is a control of the
expenditures. That would help the
Ministry to control the expenditures so we have agreed with our Accounts that
funds could only be dispersed only after the signature of the Accounting
Officer and in his absence he must authorized the other officer to countersign
for him. In funds which are regarded as
investment by other development partners we have at least two groups like Group
A consists of the Permanent Secretary and the Under Secretary. Group B consists of people who are operating the
attach projects like the Financial Controller and the Project Manager and funds
can only be withdrawn if we have two signatures from both groups and not two
signatures from a particular group.
Those are the initial measures which the Ministry has taken to help
control the expenditures.
Hon Koli: Earlier on you talked about rural training
centre, Community Based Training Centre and then the Boarding Training Centre (full
time centre). How do you cater for able
people or disable people. My concern is about
disable people because as you are aware within the Ministry of Health there is
a Division who catered for Community Based Rehabilitation Office, how do you
rehabilitate disable people? Is there
any provision for the disable people?
Mr B Anga
(PS): Thank you chair. We also look after our people with
disabilities. At the moment we have one
student studying in Fiji School of Blind.
She has been supported by the SIG scholarship. Already people with disabilities are
undertaking courses at Stevenberg, one of our Rural
Training Centres so there is provision to assist these
people. For the SIBEA within the
Ministry of Health, they are supported by the Pacific Regional Initiative for delivery
of basic education in short PRIBE so PRIBE has a sound project with SIBEA to
help assist these people with disabilities.
So we are very much trying to assist wherever possible all citizens of
our country in our provinces.
Interim Chairman: In my opening remark I mentioned there are 48
recommendations content in the Audit report.
We are now 12 months since the draft was given to your Ministry so the
Committee would like to know if your ministry has any detail action plan in
this recommendation and if you have any action plan on this recommendation can
you give us a copy?
Mr B Anga
(PS): Obviously, as I mentioned earlier
some of the issues which I have mentioned is a direct response to some of the
recommendations so there are already things which are happening to respond to
that. We do not have the action plan
directly to respond to the report but some of these activities which I have
mentioned are already clear in our annual work program and also in our national
education action plan for 2007 to 2009. So some of the issues which are mentioned in the report have
already been provided for in our annual work program and also in our national
education action plan to 2009. If
the committee intends to have the action plan basically for this report we can
always expect those activities and put it together and make a submission in the
future.
Hon Fono: That is the intention of the committee base
on the audit reports we would like to see Ministries producing action plan such
in a metric form as to they are going to address the problematic areas that are
identified under recommendations that is why the Chairman raised that concern.
Chairman: Just for check and balance and to control
your activities in the Ministry especially in resolving this recommendation, it
is good to have an action plan so that you guide yourself which one has
completed and which one has yet to complete.
I think you need to have that action plan.
Mr B Anga
(PS): We will definitely respond to that
request.
Hon Fono: Coming back to the manpower plan. Does the Ministry has in its database on the
qualified manpower that the country has at the moment and in light of the need
to provide scholarships that our own specialized areas whether they be
technical professional where we need to address in terms of the private
sector. Is there a database available in
the Ministry?
Mr B Anga
(PS): We depend on this recent survey by
the World Bank which provide the basis for us to
improve on our planning for development of our manpower. So we have some kind of a data and this data
in our view will also help us in the awarding of the scholarships because it
really indicates the area or the skills which are lacking in the country so
that is our base and that helps us to kind of improve the resource which we
have directly for the various sectors and also in this regard help us try and
award scholarships to respond to the needs rather than just responding to an
opportunity.
Hon Fono: I have been hearing that report from the
World Bank since last year, when are we expecting that to be produced.
Mr B Anga
(PS): We also have the same concerned
honourable because they have been assuring us that it will be ready by first
quarter of 2007 and we are also waiting.
I hope that when we communicate in their other initiative they do not refer
to this so we will follow up. According
to their contact they said that it has been printed in two volumes, one is a
summary and one is the bulk report but we should request that this should reach
us so that this will help us in our future planning of these human resources.
Hon Fono: Is it being compiled by outside expertise with
no local input in that?
Mr B Anga
(PS): It is the survey has been
conducted in country but because of the non availability of the people in
country to guide that it is being finalized abroad but there has been
consultation of people in country. We
had workshop at Honiara Hotel for all participants who were involved in the
survey and we have another workshop for stakeholder enterprises to get their
input and also workshop for the Permanent Secretaries of governments, so there
were wide consultation but because at this stage we realized that people were
really committed so we thought that it would be best to allow the Consultants
to finalize this but we will follow up and we are willing to share that report
when it is available to us.
Chairman: PS and officials, one of the recommendations
in the report was to outsource the selection and management and administration
of the tertiary overseas scholarship, has the Ministry any proposal on this
one? Because the idea was to get
interference having a manager outsource outside would discourage interference,
so has the Ministry come up with a proposal on this recommendation?
Mr B Anga
(PS): We had some discussions around
that issue and our thinking is not really to outsource but to establish a High
Education Board and that Board would be responsible for administration and
awarding of scholarships then it becomes part of the Board but the Ministry of
Education would be represented at the Board through the Under Secretary so that
is our thinking. At this stage we are
yet to explore this and see the suitability of that arrangement. We are intending to look at some other
similar practices in the region so that we are really certain that this is a
right module for
Chairman: So how far have you gone in establishing the
Board?
Mr B Anga (PS): There is a similar Board in PNG which they
called ‘High Education Board or Commission’ which is supporting the Department
of Education, so our plan is to basically go and have a look of what other practices,
what other module around there and then after that then we can propose to
government of the possible options which the government could take. So we are still exploring that possibility.
Hon Fono: In view of the increase population we have at
the moment and the limited scholarships that are normally available every year we
tend to find a lot of students although qualified under the GPA there are no
scholarships available, what is government going to do about it? In view of some countries adapting bonding
policy or a loan scheme to assist the private sponsored students getting
financial assistance to get on some scholarship training, are these being
considered by the Ministry to include in your scholarship policy? Otherwise a lot of our students although qualified
under the normal requirements would find themselves not placed under the
scholarship because whilst a number of students go through the formal education
process the level of scholarships have not increased not only under SIG but
other development partners’ scholarship programs. Can the PS inform the Committee as to what
steps the government is taking to try and address that program?
Mr B Anga
(PS): Firstly, the policy of the
government is that they are proposing improvement of our own institutions to
ensure that the training opportunities are available to many of our citizens, hence
the reorganization of our own
For the bonding this is one of the
issues which we wand to consult with our stakeholders even at some stage
prominent people like yourselves, what is the best arrangement for bonding? But we thought that if there is a need in the
province then may be the bonding should come to indicate to that person that
after you graduate you should go and serve in that province. This is important because in some cases
people …. and they want to work in town so I think the
bonding arrangement should not only bond that person with SIG but rather bond
that person to the profession out in the rural areas because it is a training
to a respond to their needs in the provinces.
So there is an aspect which ……
Hon Fono: The area of bonding as I see it the nation
has lost quite a number of its qualified manpower to overseas in terms of brain
drain. Having gone through benefiting
from the scholarship offered by the government or donors to SI Government when
they graduate they end up working overseas which is a cost to the nation. So that bonding is quite important that
government should try and look at including it in its Tertiary scholarship
policy.
Mr B Anga
(PS): That is one of the issues which is
in our consultation in the Tertiary policy, we will want to have some clear
indications from our consultation to help government to say, okay this is
something which is agreed so that we are not seen as enforcing it but there is
involvement of other stakeholders to get that support from the stakeholders and
the wider public before we can enforce them but it is an important issue for
us. Obviously, knowing that the earnings
are also there to be remitted but may be that comes directly to the immediate
family members but not so much generally as the government.
Chairman: PS and officials I noted from your discussion
today that there is a management system in place may be it is good know if you
have manpower trainings to handle the system and if the system is well
protected because anybody can just have access and input data into that system
because anything good happen so what is your plan when implementing this system
in place, do you have to control over the system?
Mr B Anga
(PS): That system is in place and Rose
is the person directly involve in the system and may be I should allow her to respond
to that question because she is working directly with the consultants in this
country.
Hon Fono: Is it a software program?
Ms Rose (Acting Director of NTU): Thank you Chairman, yes I am directly
involved with that system and I had some brief training on entering data and
sorting data and printing out relevant information or report with the
system. How it has been protected is
that I have a password to get into the system.
We have three computers in our Office which we can access to that scholar
system, one for the Director, one for myself and the other
for the other officer. If one of has to
go into the system to enter data he/she has to enter his/her password and that
will identify the person who enters the data.
So if you put anything that is not acceptable it will be identified automatically.
Mr Eric (AG Advisor): If I could Mr
Chairman, in relation to the action plan may be we could provide a draft plan
that we have to the PS to facilitate that because I know the Committee is
asking this in this hearing to ensure that they have a quarterly report back to
the Committee if we have that same sort of process that would facilitate us to
keep tract on all 48 recommendations if we provide the plan to the PS and he is
happy to provide that to the Committee on that regular basis and ensure the
Committee is able to track the action taken by the Ministry on all those
recommendations.
Mr B Anga
(PS): Yes, that would be necessary.
Interim Chairman: If there is nothing from the Committee members
may I on behalf of the Committee thanks the PS and officials to come and
present this present. I know it is not
an easy task to come here but you have done it very well so once again thank
you very much.