The Fiji Higher Education Commission (FHEC) hopes to implement an industry training program for students of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions.
FHEC director Dr Rohit Kishore highlighted this before the Public Accounts Committee during a presentation on FHEC’s 2018 audited accounts.
Dr Kishore said they aimed to have industry-based TVET institutions rather than a centralised TVET system.
“We’re visiting Vatukoula Gold Mines and they are really one of the biggest TVET users, they’ve been channeling the graduates from Fiji National University and they have some issues there,” he said.
“They say when the graduates come out, it takes another two years to train them and get them to the quality that they want.
“So we are setting up the industry type institution, they (Vatukoula) have a training department and it is quite good. These consist of very experienced miners and tradespeople so we said we might as well upgrade it to the institutions like we have done with the police academy as they are training their own.”
He said the aim was to provide a teacher-trainer type of system where experienced tradespeople could impart their knowledge and skills onto students.
“For example, welders who are very experienced but they don’t have a teaching certificate so we’ll do train the trainer and they’ll become sort of a registered TVET teacher or lecturer.”
Committee chair Alvick Maharaj said while the idea was a good one, certain areas of interest were of concern, for example, the health sector.
“We also have to look at which programs we are looking at, for example, for a welder to train a welder, that’s appropriate but if we are looking at the health field and somebody’s life is at stake, that is something concerning,” he said.
“So those are some of the critical areas we need to look at, who is training these people who are dealing with the daily lives of other people.”
