Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today I am very pleased to join you all in this ceremony to confer degrees to all our 771 new graduates of the Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE).
Taking this great opportunity, on behalf of the Royal Government and myself, let me express my cordial appreciation to Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) and RULE for its achievements, as well as to all students for their efforts and to all professors of RULE for their attention and care thus achieving fruitful outcomes that is worth to be proud. All these results could not happen without assistance from many friendly countries that have supported a successful education in Cambodia. This indeed reflects the essential role of international cooperation in helping to build the foundation for the development of tertiary education in Cambodia.
At the same time, this achievement is the outcome of arduous effort made by MoEYS, civil servants, lecturers, in particular the graduates, themselves, who obtained success in their study lives. This is an evidence of the implementation of the Royal Government’s policy in building and expanding human resources aiming at transforming Cambodia to be a human-resource-full society with a top civilization as in Khmer Kingdom historical area. Such a great burden work requires participation from law experts and economists who are selected among students who graduated from this university, other universities and others faculties all over the countries, as well as students who continue their studies abroad.
Indeed, the conferring of degree to 771 graduates of RULE is another confirmation reflexes the attention of the Royal Government. Within the framework of human resources development, the Royal Government clearly understands and strongly commits to the building and strengthening human resources through long-term strategic development which is “Poverty Reduction has human resources development as its root”, since the outcome can ensure an economic growth with sustainability and equality of distribution. The human resources accumulation is our highest priority and international experiences firmly show that “A development has beginning and ending with human”.
In this context, the Royal Government has given top priority to reforming education for the causes of developing a high quality human resource, through strengthening educational foundation and teaching standard, and within a systematic and comprehensive national development framework. The Royal Government has clearly recognized that strengthening educational system and training of qualified human resources are of tremendous importance to improve and strengthen the human knowledge base. Furthermore, this presents a significant effort promoting Cambodia’s competitiveness against other partners in the region and the world who are now very active in this era of regionalization and globalization.
Indeed, an economy will grow only if there is substantial stock of talents and intellectuals, including the effective use and management of those assets. Therefore, it is necessary to enable a favorable environment for development of human resources and to manage them appropriately according to their qualifications. It is very important for all kinds of organizations: public, private and NGOs.
I would like to emphasis on two issues that we should together consider and put effort to reach direction and vision for both present and future; they are “the quality of education and employment”. To address the above issue, primarily, the program and curriculum have to be responsive to the new development of economy and society, to meet the demand of labor market, and to have high quality with comparative to national, regional and global standard. This requires the assurance of educational quality and training in all sectors, fields and skills.
In this regard, the Royal Government has established a national committee to assess the quality of education, which has role to establish juristic mechanism for managing the quality of education, in order to ensure and enhance the quality of tertiary education to be efficient and in line with international standard, as well as to determine structure of management and performance of the quality of education assessment. The committee has to effectively fulfill its duties; so that both public and private educational institutions, that fairly in competition, will push up their quality. By doing so we can achieve the plan of MoEYS and the Royal Government’s policy platform that considers education is one of the strategies to reduce poverty.
In the last several decades, Cambodia overcame many difficulties and challenges that never experienced by the other nations. Experienced with those, our really simple hope is to provide our people opportunity to shape and direct their own future. Within this framework, the vision of the Royal Government concentrates on:
First– Turning the first century of this millennium to be century of economic growth, poverty reduction, social development and prosperity for Cambodia and all strata of Cambodian people.
Second– Establishing a well-cell-connected society with high education and dignity culture in Cambodia.
Third– Putting more effort to make our people proud, and become a full independent and true freedom nation that is able to master its destiny and become the real partner in the world and regional affaires.
Fourth– strengthening democracy by deeply embedding into Cambodian society via improvement of rule of law, good governance, human right and dignity of our people for their daily livelihood as well as the performance of their beliefs.
Indeed, our wishes, the rich or the poor, are to make Cambodia to be a rule-of-law society on the top of liberal democratic foundation. To achieve this objective, there is a need to promote the training of human resources to be qualified persons who have profound understanding of individual power and liberty, have the spirit of loving and serving the people’s interests and further and uphold the spirit of legal respects.
Reality, a state is subjected to the awareness for all people. A state is not only authorized to govern the country, but also has obligations and duties on various affaires including to national sovereignty, security, public order and people’s likelihood. In economic framework, a state always withdraws itself from some activities that can be operated by the markets and private sectors at more efficient level such as price setting, resource allocation and various businesses. On the hand, a state concentrates on some core responsibilities such as ensuring of the legal respects, providing of high quality public services, implementing prudential macroeconomic policy and creating the legal rules and regulations to promote transparency of private sector’s activities. It is true that a state has to highly focus on the eradication of corruption in all forms to attain all aspects of “good governance”, which are necessary condition to increase the saving, investment, and sustainable growth.
In this sense, the Royal Government of Cambodia has set respectively its political and economic line to be the liberal and multi-party democracy and market economy in order to rehabilitate and develop Cambodia, after the deterioration of more than two-decade war. At the same time, thanks to successful implementation of the governments’ “Win-Win” policy, we have completely rooted out military and political structure of the Democratic Kampuchea, and brought back full peace to the nation and our people. This is an opportunity and a favorable condition to develop economy and society upon obtaining progression and to get support from international communities as we have today.
In line of human resources development, the RGC has paid attention to build economic infrastructure such as: schools, bridges, hospitals, hydroelectric dump, channels and irrigation networks, which is a mean to build the rule of law that has democracy as the basis for economic growth, job creation, equity and efficiency. Although, result is yet reach 100% of needed, it is a good implication to achieve our future goals.
For all students, the main challenge is human resource development which must connect to the education of morality, virtue, high consciousness, technical capacity and general management knowledge to cope with our present environment. It is a difficult to perfectly project, because history of a nation is made by successor from a generation to another, particularly those who are sitting here.
All students should realize that to educate the people to be the good citizen with national and high professional consciousness and certain skills is not as easy as our imagination. Indeed, educating people is very difficult, because it is physical, mental and intellectual training. In the past, you have difficulties in study, but in the future, you have to face with practical works in your career for national interest and your own livelihood after graduating from the university.
In closing, once again on behalf of the Royal Government, I would like to thank all development partners who have actively contributed to the rehabilitation education sector, in particular those that support in term of materials, technical assistances and spirit to this university and I would like to express my full heart congratulation to our graduates.
I do appreciate and thank the management, public servants, education staffs and professors of RULE, in particularly the Royal Government who is continuing to effectively support in term of materials, spirits and technical issues which accelerate the development of this university since 1992. I also thank the government of friendly countries who have constantly supported and provided scholarship to Cambodian students to continue their studies in those countries.
Finally, I wish you all, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, professors and dear students, the Five Gems of Buddhist Blessings.
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