In addition to the prepared text, Samdech Techo has made his extempore comments and recommendations on following topics.
In order to provide additional inputs to the conference for
direction setting and preparation of the education strategic plan
2012-2013, I would like to provide a number of recommendations as
follows:
First: The Ministry of
Education, Youth and Sport must strengthen and expand the education of
children at the primary level to be further improved and more extensive
by paying attention to the promotion of the curriculum at the senior
nursery level in order to achieve success in both quantity and quality
at the primary level…
Second: The MoEYS
must pay high attention to the factor of quantity and quality by
ensuring the efficiency of the implementation of the academic curriculum
and the promotion of study in the fields of mathematics, science,
technologies, foreign languages and social science…
Third: The MoEYS
must strengthen and accelerate the non-formal education system to be in
line with the formal education system by increasing closer cooperation
with all development partners in order to collect all dropped out
students, over-school aged children and citizens who lost opportunity
for education to get back to school based on the “Professional Literacy or Distance Learning Programs” …
Illiteracy and Letters-Forgetting Challenges
At this point, I wish to add that we
also have this challenge of illiteracy but also letters-forgetting
issue. I could recall that at some stage in the past, we had to bring
this issue up and conducted review classes. Why
did that happen? It happened because those people had less means to
improve their learning, for example no newspapers to read, etc., because
they lived in faraway places. With lack of reading habit and nothing to
read, those people faced with the challenge of forgetting the learned
letters. I think this is a point of concern and deserves our attention
as well.
Fourth: The Ministries in
charge of education and higher education must pay attention to the skill
development such as engineering, industry, mine and energy,
agriculture, science and technology, especially promote and enhance the
scientific research among students and teachers to be more comprehensive
and conform to the context of socio-economic development …
Fifth: The MoEYS
must try to strengthen the implementation of law on education and legal
documents to be more efficient as well as strengthening the planning
and statistics of education …
Sixth: The MoEYS
must increase firm attention on youth development by encouraging and
providing positive attributes and opportunity to students to be able to
develop their potential in education for jobs, health, participatory
decision making, contributing to family and community development and
national development with high responsibility, hope and self-confidence …
Seventh: The MoEYS
must increase the link between the content of academic curriculum at
all levels to the education of morality, culture, customs, tradition,
respect of rights and dignity of human being, as well as promoting the
respect of the principles of freedom, democracy and justice …
A Fight with the Journalists
In addition to the above, I would make a few points in relation
to the issue of wilful persons, who have now become a serious concern
not only among youngsters alone but senior people too. Last night there
was an incident involving an under-secretary of state in the Ministry of
Justice in a fight with journalists in the street. Having caused
traffic accident, this group of people did not allow the press to take
their pictures, but also inflicted injury upon some journalists. I am
waiting to see what (legal action) will be taken on this David Chanaiwa.
It seems to me that is the same old face. This time an under-secretary
of state is involved.
In fact, David Chanaiwa has gone through indictment several
times on ground of shooting spree and driving car in the public garden.
How come he managed to get himself cleared. I am waiting to see now if
he is going to get himself clear too this time. I doubted it. As for the
undersecretary of state of the Ministry of Justice, who is from the
Funcinpec Party, I already wrote to Deputy Prime Minister HE Nhek
Bunchhay to remove him from his portfolio and send to court. I found it
hard to believe that this man has already disappeared.
Worst of all, it is the same case, why does it have to be one
person staying in custody while another one staying out. They should be
treated as one package of criminal offense. When I probed, they told me
that the person already escaped. Where does he go? We are in pursuit of
our motto of “today and tomorrow without traffic accident,” but these
men were having their car races and causing damages to public property
such as electric poles. Beating the journalists has doubled their guilty
acts. As they are over forty already, it is not correct to refer to
them as wilful youngsters.
Decreasing Budget Percentage for Education
Another point that I also heard and discussed with H.E.
Jean-François Cautain, Ambassador of the European Union relates to
decreasing percentage of budget on education. I admit that and I
advocate growth in educational budget too. It is true that the amount of
cash pledged for education is bigger from year to year. However, as far
as how many percentages allocated from education, health or social
affairs has not yet responded to the level we want.
In the year 2000, after gaining peace, I set the aim of
reducing the number of soldiers from 130,000 to 60,000 only. That was my
target. I wanted to do so because I had in mind that the leftover will
be for the Ministry of Education and Health. Unfortunately, we were able
to reduce only 10,000 soldiers from the list. In fact, even now we are
continuing to promote more reduction according to program we can. We
cannot just tell them to go home.
It was quite unfortunate that we did not make success on this
problem. While we also had this trouble along the border, we need to
keep the number of soldiers as it is. However, we are striving to
restore the previous curve. I thank the Ambassador of the European Union
for paying his attention on this matter to me. I agree with his
recommendations but I also encourage us to make own efforts to in
addition to the supports that we are gaining from partners.
Four Primary Needs of the People
Further, I would like to bring to the attention once again on
land titling and distribution among people, which, as I said on several
occasions already, will not be a target to achieve alone. After
receiving their proper land titles and lands, primarily our people will
need four basic supports – roads, water, schools and healthcare
services. It is common that because of peace, our people are getting
farther into the remote areas to cultivate. That was not the case when
the country was at war. People would not even go to the Preah Sihanouk
province for insecurity. That time there was almost regular ambush along
the road somewhere near Pij Nil area. Now peace prevails, people go
wherever they wish to.
This has also brought about a situation that they encroached
upon forestland, where in actuality has become their cultivation areas
of various crops already. Since these actions took place in a fast and
concerted manner, we have been slow to organize the establishment of
their villages and to respond to their four basic needs. For your
information, I have responded to a number of urgent demands for school
buildings, through the youth-student volunteers, for people in land
measuring areas of provinces of Uddar Meanjei, Preah Vihear, Stoeng
Treng and Kratie.
Of course, there are other needs too like micro-finance to
support their business activities but first to address the four basic
demands. I am urging the ministries and institutions concerned to take
into consideration these recommendations. The Ministry of Rural
Development needs to pay attention on road access issue, the Ministry of
Water Resource and Meteorology on irrigation, Ministry of Education,
Youth and Sports on schooling, and Ministry of Health on healthcare
issue.
We need to make another step following the ‘new action on
existing land policy’ to ensure schooling in areas that they are working
for development. Our people are dispersing further out, whereas the
Royal Government is investing the state fund as well as the fund
accumulated from resource shared by charitable persons to provide them
with the four basic needs. We are doing so to ensure equitable and
tandem development process or people will not be able to work on the
provided land and their children cannot have access to education, which
could lead to school dropout. We also need to ensure that healthcare
services are within their reach.
Cooperation with Mali
I wish to give HE Im Setthi, Minister of Education, Youth and
Sports to handle a work for me. I am in the cooperation with Mali
through Ms Eva Mysliwiec, who, after leaving Cambodia, went to work in
Mali. Before coming to Cambodia, she used to work in Mali. After her
father died, she came to Cambodia for a three-month project. It turned
out to be thirty years for her. She even is holding a Cambodian
nationality too. Now she returns to Mali. Before she left, because of
political stability in the country I told her to look into any area of
interest that Cambodia could be of assistance, for instance schooling,
etc.
She and her team then worked on a school project. They
purchased land and raised fund and resource from various partners. I
also contributed a part of it for the construction of the school
project. Only recently, the school director requests for my permission
to call it ‘School of Samdech Hun Sen’ and for a representative to join
them in the inauguration of the school in months ahead. I think I am
going to send the Minister of Education, Youth and Sports for this
event. As we now have cooperation project, it is also good to share
experiences.
A while ago, I got a request from Guinea, who was looking to
buy rice from Cambodia but also needed our agricultural expertise. While
under discussion, there was a military coup in Guinea. Last year,
President of Guinea conducted a visit to Cambodia. He request the
purchase of Cambodian rice and provision of agricultural assistance. I
agreed and both sides need to exchange how the project would proceed. As
we got helps by various developed countries, we also have the ability
to share our experiences with other countries too. For example, we have
our army in Sudan, Lebanon, and formerly in Chad and Central African
Republic. We also had our men in the preliminary observation operation
phase in Syria. Our military medical staff in Sudan provided treatment
for the Sudanese but also foreign diplomats.