– Your Excellencies, National and International Guests,
– Dear Lecturers and Students!
Today, My wife and I are highly honored and happy to join the Degree-handover Ceremony to the 1st Batch of Master and Bachelor students, the 3rd Batch of Diploma Students, and 4th Batch of Certificate students of the Western University. This enormous ceremony marks the first event for the Western University in contributing to the increase in human resource achievements and national development as well as responding to the RGC’s Rectangular Strategy for the development of human resource in Cambodia. Indeed, this contribution has started from the open policy of the RGC on education sector by promoting the private sector which has been considered as “the main engine of economic growth”, to make progress along with the public sector.
The higher education at both public and private sector levels which have been making progress simultaneously together has always place particular attention on the quality and standard of education and training of human resource in accordance with the new requirement of today’s labor market which is competing based on quality. As a result, this sector has been highly evaluated in terms of its progress and modernity as having stronger foundation and broader coverage according to the spirit of the RGC’s Rectangular Strategy for growth, employment, equity, and efficiency during the Third Legislature of the Assembly.
For instance, according to the report made by His Excellency, Rector of the University, the success achieved today includes a total number of 671 graduates, 301 of whom are female, who are about to be awarded with Master, Bachelor, and Diploma degrees and certificates for the foundation year. On behalf of the RGC, I sincerely congratulate and appreciate Western University for its success and fruitful achievement in its mission to build human capacity and respond to the needs of human resource development in Cambodia. At the same time, my wife and I would also like to congratulate all graduates who have made mental and physical efforts and overcome all the challenges to realize their respective goals today. What we are witnessing here is the pride of all of us, including the RGC, Western University, all the graduates and their families, and our nation as a whole.
In this era of knowledge, education sector will determine the future of any country. In this sense, for the sake of a prosper future as well as the response to new challenges and needs posed by the increasingly competing market and rapid changes, the RGC will continue to build human capacity with quality and knowledge to take part in regional and global integration, both in terms of economic and social sector. The RGC has employed a concrete education policy which is based on “Education for All”, “All for Education”; and has introduced clear training strategies, that is training for knowledge, know-how, and good characteristics for the society.
During the time in which we are in dire need for quality intellectual capital to ensure the country’s competitive advantage and to act as a key for sustainable development in all sectors, we become increasingly proud as we have built these capitals by ourselves. These tasks bring about a big hope to the society, especially Cambodian youths in absorbing the knowledge, know-how and profession. In another particular sense, these achievements reflect the creation and provision of opportunities by the RGC to our young generation according to the saying that goes “Youths are the Bamboo-Shoot”. In this direction, the RGC has always prepared and implemented its policies by promoting capacity and skill building through various education and training programs. Through this mechanism, Cambodian youths will become more competent and skillful and along with increased opportunity, they will be able to equitably compete with youths in the regional and developed countries in all sectors. Youths’ potentials have a high priority, because youths are the national treasure who can carry on social development. It is in this spirit that the RGC has always implemented open policies towards the youths, without obstructing either their knowledge, willingness and spiritual development. In general, any society that prevents the development of youths will move backward.
In this sense, I am even more proud of and strongly hope that our country will catch up with other countries in the region and the world faster because we have our own established education and training institutions, and officials with high moral and very determined toward work as well as looking optimistically and brightly forward. At the same time, I would like to urge all youths to continue your effort along with this achievement to become real successors or.
If we take a look back on our education sector in the past, we have initially started from the “scratch”, that is from “empty hands” until present, and are developing from the not-so good and poor quality of education into better and higher quality ones, which is the determining factor of the market and society. Along with correct policy which starts from the people with modest knowledge teaching the unknowledgeable people, and people with high knowledge teaching people with modest knowledge, which is being started here (the pedagogy) is considered to be our frog’s leap progress.
Indeed, we have produced significant achievements in the education and training sectors, but both public and private institutions face numerous challenges on experience and technologies management system. In this connection, I urge all related parties, especially the government’s policy and supervision institutions such as the MoEYS and Education Quality Accreditation Committee of Cambodia to pay attention to making appropriate policies to strengthen the technical work, fill the gaps, and correct the inactiveness and mistakes of executing agencies timely. Along with this, the education and training institutions must strengthen and improve their own management to comply with the national and regional progress, and they must improve their teaching and learning techniques by exchanging experiences with other partner countries in the region and the world in order to set the direction in accordance with our national development and rehabilitation vision aiming at building human resources with equal employment opportunity and capacity to our partner countries for the benefit of our nation.
On the one hand, these are the keys for higher education development, and on the other hand, for the education and training filed of Cambodia as well as contributing to the development of Cambodia.
Beside the right policies and strategy, the method or way of implementation is even more crucial in order to ensure the effective results. One of the theories of Total Quality Management stressed on the management of all lines or stages of production in order to seek for immediate and timely improvement measures to avoid having to just wait for the control of final outputs because if those finished products were broken we would have to throw them away or just couldn’t get them altered, which can be a big loss in management. In this sense, educating the children and employees or building human resource are the same, meaning that if we don’t actually try to correct from a small mistake those children, employees or works will become more and more problematic which can be too late to be corrected such as the case of Sambok Moan road, which can be totally destroyed if it is kept for long.
Through this I realize that the strengthening of responsibility coupled with clear cut criteria set as the foundation to decide or adjust timely in all sorts and levels of management either in private or public sector, especially the administrative work, is really beneficial and it should be paid attention to by all management institutions. The management of human resource training is even more significant as people are the sources of everything. If people are of quality the products made by the people will also be in good quality.
I am fully convinced that all the 671 students who are about to receive their Diplomas, Bachelor and Master Degrees in a very short moment, will truly become the intellectual workforce serving our nation and becoming the considerate and moral intellectuals in order to help contribute to the development of Cambodia at large. Besides, you have to bear in mind that the inconsiderate and immoral intellectuals can not become good citizens for our nation.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to wish you all success, happiness in life hereinafter and I would like to express my deepest appreciation and praise the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, related institutions and all the training institutions who have smoothly cooperated with one another and put utmost effort for the sake of upgrading the Cambodian education sector, which is intensively and truly contributing to the end objective of poverty reduction in Cambodia.
Meanwhile, on behalf of the Royal Government and on my own behalf and my wife, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation and congratulation for the management boards, staff, and lecturers of the Western University, who have put great effort in their respective responsibilities in a mission to build human capital for our nation. These achievements require all the Universities as well as other educational and training institutions in this new Millennium to put further effort in making sure that our education and training sector can actually support and meet the changing in economic force as expected. In particular, this University has to constantly develop and modernize the academic curriculum, materials, academic staff and professor capacity, conforming to the spirit of the evolving development of the market and society.
At the end, I would like to wish Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished National and International Guests and the management, staff and lecturers the 5 Gems of Buddhist Blessing: longevity, nobility, health, strength and wisdom.
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