Deputy Minister slams Mahinda Chinthana

Higher Education Deputy Minister Mohammed Musthaffa took a swipe at the Mahinda Chinthana saying that he had to laugh at himself on the paragraph pointing out plans to attract foreign students to select Sri Lanka as their destination for higher education as stated in the Mahinda Chinthana while 8000 to 9000 students leave the county annually to obtain higher education in foreign universities.

Addressing the launching of the National Higher Education Management Information System (NHEMIS) on Wednesday he said that lot of universities in the country does not have the qualified staff, chancellors and sufficient facilities adding that 70% of the students who come out of the universities are dependent on government employment as they do not fit into the private sector and the international market as they do not have proper knowledge in English and IT.

"We must give priority to immediate reforms that would allow private participation in state universities and we must discuss the matter with extremist groups who do not like the idea and should set up a select committee in the Parliament to discuss the matter," he said.

Meanwhile Science and Technology Minister Tissa Vitharana addressing the occasion said that fortunately or unfortunately there are efficient systems of piracy in creating software in the country.

“When I visited the Government Leaders Forum organized by the Microsoft recently in Indonesia, one of their main conditions to come into the country to help our IT sector was that all Microsoft based Software in the country should be licensed.

I said though it is a hard task and we would walk in that direction which is concerned on protecting intellectual rights,” he said.

“Only 0.13% from the budget is allocated to the Science and Technology sector in the country and it is way behind comparing to the other countries in the region. We have been lagging behind in the fields of Microelectronics, Nanotechnology which would be the future of science and technology that would help play a major role in the development of the country,” he said.

The National Higher Education Management Information System (NHEMIS) was launched by the Higher Education Ministry to provide information for planning, monitoring and evaluation for the entire higher education sector along with the technical assistance of the German Government.

While hosted by the Ministry, the system will cover information of the higher education sector such as Universities, Technical Schools, Vocational Training Institutions, Private Higher Education Institutes, Labour Market information and Cross Border Education where the system finally produces national level indicators.

Ministry's spokesman Mr.U. E. Perera said that the NHEMIS is a component of the IRQUE Project which is aimed at improving relevance and quality of undergraduate education in Sri Lankan universities.

"The IRQUE Project is implemented through Policy Planning and Development Unit (PPDU) of the Ministry and supports the government's long term tertiary education reform programme by enhancing institutional capacities to achieve greater relevance and quality in undergraduate programmes and contributes to building human capital as a key factor in poverty reduction," he said.

The technical assistance for the setting up of NHEMIS was provided by the German government along with their counterpart in Sri Lanka, the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC).