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| Panellists (L-R) Ms. Tessa Howell, Mr Carlisle James, Mr. Anslem Caines, Mrs Lornette Corner Queely and Mrs. Vinetta Hobson Moving. |
CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (April 02, 2007) -- A country's human resource is its most important asset, and for a country to be truly developed, its human resource development must be given high priority, a view expressed by Mrs Venetta Hobson Moving, Permanent Secretary of the Human Resource Department in the Nevis Island Administration (NIA).
Her comment came while she delivered a presentation at a panel discussion as part of an assessment programme organised by the Department, in order to evaluate the training needs for national development on Nevis.
She was among five persons from a cross section of the community who took part in the discussion recently at the Cultural centre in Charlestown.
"Placing people at the centre of the development thrust by securing the widest choice of and access to training and educational opportunities in order to compete globally is the ultimate goal. The challenge is steep for a small developing island such as Nevis with very limited resources and no onshore tertiary institution to access the training needed. Assistance from international agencies and countries ceased in the mid 1990s and for the most part, government has been providing assistance to its nationals in their quest for higher education," she said.
According to Mrs. Moving, although Cuba and Taiwan offered Nevisians educational opportunities, the present trend has seen persons, who gained acceptance into colleges and universities have made application to government for assistance. Also, more persons who were already at university have made request to government for financial assistance. Nonetheless, she made the point that any support given by the NIA was based on the demands placed on the available funds or priorities in areas as articulated by the Administration.
Notwithstanding, She said Nevis needed trained professionals in all areas in particular health, education, engineering, management, technicians and administration in both legal and accounting fields but in any chosen field, human resource development was important.
"So why are we not getting persons into teaching, policing, nursing and farming and those other essential services without which, there can be no safe environment for the healthy intelligent lawyers and accountants to operate?" she asked. "Have those of us in these various professions been selling the profession short? Have we demonstrated that whatever field we are in we are professionals?
"While certain professions may yield lucrative monetary returns over others, the lucrative mind is just as important and can yield great benefits as well. Encouraging people to be the best they can be, by accessing every available opportunity to make [them] more efficient in their chosen field, is one of the ways to position people for the advancement of national development. While Nevis may not have physical structures to cater to the training needs of all its people, there are opportunities," she said..~~adz:Right~~
Mrs. Moving outlined the assistance already available from the Administration which included and annual scholarship to who attained the best A' level/CAPE results. The recipient is allowed to attend a college of their choice; the payment of economic costs to students who attended any of the three University of the West Indies campuses; full or partial tuition fees mainly for those going to regional or international institutions; the payment of all fees for public servants attending regional institutions and the payment of salaries to teachers and nurses already in the system while allowances provided in other cases.
Meantime, fellow panellist Mrs Lornette Queely Conner, Education Officer with responsibility for Curriculum Development during her presentation, applauded the government's thrust towards the creation of an environment of people orientation, in which people came first.
She said education was at the heart of human progress but the economic and social prosperity as a people would depend on the ability to educate everyone to be prepared to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
"As a developing society, we must strive to be innovative, since an innovative society prepares its people for change. However, I would like to propose that with positioning our people for advancement, we must first try to promote and develop that element of the 'knowledge triangle" which is most common to us, and that is education.
"With education on the cutting edge, we can then integrate the other two elements (research and innovation) by investing in our people and by supporting our education system in our quest to make it more relevant to the needs of a global knowledge-based economy," she said.
Mrs Conner noted that education aimed at positioning Nevisians for the advancement of national development should focus on the development of intellectual capacity, not only in mastery of content but also to process, adapt and apply existing information citing that Nevisians were poised to seize every opportunity given to them but the opportunities needed to be made available.
She said it must be recognised that education was a public good and in that context all other institutions of society should work with the education system in an effort to improve the quality of education offered to Nevisians so that the combined efforts could set the pace for national development.
Other presentations were made by Mr. Anslem Caines Sixth Form student and President of the Literary and Debating Society, Ms. Tessa Howell host of 'Sister to Sister" a local radio talk show, and Mr. Carlisle James Operations Coordinator at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Nevis Branch. Mr Stevenson Manners served as moderator.
