Resign or face the axe, is the tough ultimatum given to the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education SICHE director Dick Ha’amori.
Mr Ha’amori has no choice but to serenely resign to save face.
SICHE council during their meeting mid last month gave the director seven days to resign or face termination.
Chairlady Dr Alice Pollard told Solomon Star yesterday the council has no confidence in the director.
“Because the council has no confidence in him, we met and decided to give him seven days to resign.”
Mrs Pollard said the council sees the removal as important and a move in the right direction for the institution.
She said Donald Malasa has been appointed temporarily to be the acting director for the next six months.
Meanwhile president of the SICHE National Lecture Association CHENCLA Captain Dudley Hoala hails the appointment of Mr Malasa.
Mr Hoala said the incompetency and non performance of the Mr Ha’amori have forced himself out.
A statement from CHENLA said the appointment of Mr Malasa is a proper move by the Ministry of Education and SICHE council.
“Mr Malasa, a qualified educationist who is also a member of the SICHE Council, is already well-informed of the many problems that are facing the state-owned highest tertiary institution on the land.”
CHENLA said they expect the acting director to use his high caliber management capacity and relevant experience in educational administration, to set new visions to the development of SICHE and to find solutions to the current outstanding issues affecting the Lecturers of the institution.
“Most of these issues have been submitted by the Association to the Senior Management and the SICHE Council but so far there has not been any positive response from both of these two management bodies.”
They strongly appeal to SICHE management to take immediate steps to advertise the three top posts in the organizational structure of the College namely Director, Deputy Director and Registrar.
They said the removal of Mr Ha’amori and the recent dissolution of Parliament is a golden opportunity for the appointment of the right people to develop SICHE into a high educational institution that the country can be proud of.
“If a local with the necessary qualifications and experience cannot be found readily, then an expatriate should be given the post of Director.
“The Deputy Director should also be a highly qualified educationist, preferably to PhD level, especially in the field of educational administration.
“This is the person who would understudy the expatriate Director for a period of not less than five years before he or she takes over as the head of the institution.
“We further highly recommend that the post of Registrar should be manned by an academic, and the minimum formal qualification for the post is a Master degree in Public Administration, an MBA or a MEd in Educational Administration or related fields and has education institutional experience.
“Strictly speaking, the current Manager of Registry Office is not the Registrar and therefore should not be signing or assisting to endorse awards such as Certificates, Diplomas and other academic awards.”
CHENLA argued that any academic awards that have been endorsed by the current holder of the post of Manager of Registry Office can be regarded as illegal and therefore can be declared as null and void.
“We hereby call on appropriate authorities to look into this matter immediately and to act accordingly.
“The Association is confident that if these three posts are given to the right people and the new Government does have a policy for SICHE, we could well be on the right road to achieving a national pride- a University we would claim to be our own.”
CHENLA claims that the future of SICHE will continue to look bleak if these matters are not immediately addressed.
“The lack of political will power to improve SICHE, poor decision making and poor leadership at the Ministerial level of the Government and at the management level of SICHE, and the absence of effective dialogue between the two authorities are the main causes for the failure of SICHE to show any real signs of advancement over the last five to ten years.
“This is the collective view of the SICHE National Lecturers Association (CHENLA), the organization whose membership comprises of all the academic staff of the Institution.”
They said the two previous Ministers of Education, Dr Derek Sikua who later became the Prime Minister and the current caretaker Minister Mathew Wale, had no policy on SICHE during their tenure as Ministers.
“We are now into the beginning of the second decade of the second millennium but the future of this State-owned highest tertiary institution on the land is still unclear and CHENLA is well aware that certain analysts are starting to question the future of SICHE.
“CHENLA is concerned because there are two higher tertiary regional institutions operating at the same time from the Kukum Campus, and close to five hundred students are taking various courses at the UPNG Open University while only a double of that number of students are attending SICHE’s Kukum Campus-based Schools.
“According to the Association’s projections, at the current rate of enrollments by the two Institutions, the number of students attending UPNG Open University should overtake the number of students attending SICHE in less than three years.
“Our country is the second biggest in terms of land mass and population within the South Pacific region and yet we do not have a University while Samoa, Fiji and even Tonga, which are much smaller than us, have already established their own national universities,” a member of the Association’s Executive said.
Chairlady Dr Alice Pollard said the deputy director’s post is also vacant with an acting person in place but the council is seriously looking at recruiting someone within the next six months.
Attempts to talk to Mr Ha’amori yesterday were unsuccessful.
By EDNAL PALMER
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