KOTA SAMARAHAN: Parents, especially those in the rural areas, must appreciate the value of education and refrain from equating sending their children to university to “monetary losses”.
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Alfred Jabu Numpang said these parents should realise that gaining an education is vital to break out of the poverty shell.
“Make sacrifices to enable your children to enter a university, and refrain from counting their monetary losses,” said Jabu, who is also Unimas Pro Chancellor, during the fourth session of the convocation at the university’s DeTAR Putra yesterday.
He said the government had always put education high on the priority list as reflected in the number of school facilities and infrastructures in the state.
Under the rural development programme, for instance, Jabu said since its inception the number of rural students entering primary and secondary schools and continuing on to institutes of higher learning had increased. He hoped 2014 Budget would benefit the education system in Sarawak, especially in the rural areas.
On Unimas, Jabu praised the courses offered by the university. He noted they were tailored for the development of the state by focusing on the state’s richness in biodiversity, agriculture, livestock breeding and fishery.
The courses, he said, would boost the state’s need for human capital to spur and sustain the growth of the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy.
During the fourth session yesterday, 607 graduates from the Faculty of Social Science and Faculty of Engineering received their scrolls from Jabu.