BY BRIAN LEZUTUNI
ALTHOUGH IT has no judicial power to prosecute, Transparency Solomon Islands (TSI) is keen on playing it’s role as a watchdog agency over the latest Taiwan Scholarship issue.
TSI Chairman, Bob Pollard told Island Sun that they will be asking the questions to the Ministry of Education to ascertain whether the allocation of ROC scholarships were free and fair.
Mr. Polllard said the TSI’s General Secretary and his staff are working on asking the questions.
“As in any situation we would like to ensure that allocation of resources is done in a transparent manner, free from corruption.
The chairman played down recent media article suggesting an investigation by TSI, saying the statement by the TSI General Secretary was taken out of context.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development has raised serious concern over the manner in which recipients of the Republic of China (ROC) sponsored scholarship are selected.
A Ministry official said they are finding it very frustrating administering this scholarship scheme.
“Every year when we meet to determine who should be awarded the scholarships on merit, ROC would in turn produce to us its list of candidates to be recipient of the scholarship.
“From history the recipients will always be in favour of children of Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament and senior Public Servants,” the official said.
However the ROC Embassy said it is not responsible for the selection of applicants to undertake studies under its scholarship.
In a statement, a senior embassy staff said the National Training Unit (NTU) within the Ministry of Education and Human Resource is responsible body for selecting the students.
The spokesperson said from an enquiry made at the NTU office, they were told that only two children belonged to MPs and not eight as previously stated in the media.
The students will be studying Mandarin language and pursuing undergraduate degrees in Taiwan, starting from early September 2011.
This includes one year of Mandarin language course and another four years of bachelor degree study.
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