Good Will Message

by Phyu Win Ei on Friday, February 24, 2012 at 11:49pm ·

Prof; Hla Myint Message on 11 FEb 2012

Ladies and Gentleman,

I am honoured to have the opportunity of attending your conference on the Development Policy options with special reference to Education and Health and saying a few words about these two key pre-requisites for promoting economic development and increasing the welfare of the people.

As a former Rector of Yangon University, I remember the time when I struggled, to bring out high quality human resources, which remained imperfectly developed and hidden in the over-expanded education system of the country.



I think we should explore all the possible sources of help to add to limited capacity of the government education department. This would include not only the expansion of scholarship programmes to enable more of our young people to study abroad but also encourage setting up the campuses inside the country, by foreign universities such as that set up the John Hopkins School of Advance Studies which was set up in Yangon. Unfortunately it was then shut down during the 1960s.
Amongst other things, these campuses might be devoted to topping up the general education level of Myanmar’s civil servants, both of the new recruits and a refresher course for the existing members. I have taught economics on a similar British civil service training course at Oxford University, teaching them roughly in the same way as I taught the economics of the developing countries to the ordinary undergraduates at the University. I mentioned this because at the talk I gave in the Seminar at Yangon two days ago, I have been concerned with the problem of augmenting the administrative capability of Myanmar to carry out various economic reforms, which the country is putting into motion.

So, I send my best wishes for the fruitful outcome of your discussions with sincerer expectations