The University of Fiji has a new campus in Ba.
The new Campus was opened by Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad on Saturday.
While opening the new facility, Professor Prasad commended the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji for their commitment to developing Fiji’s education sector.
“I want to acknowledge and it is a fact that 98 per cent of our schools in this country were built by religious organisations, community groups and the public as a whole,” he said.
“For many generations these organizations have provided education for our people.
“Governments who claim that they have created that environment must always acknowledge that fact and I think the Arya Sabha went a step further from setting up primary and secondary schools by setting up a university.
“I think it reflects on the vision and the ideas that drove the whole Arya Samaj movement since its inception by its founder Maharishi.”
He said Government was also equally committed to developing Fiji’s education sector.
“We have provided a total of about $768million to the education sector.
“This is apart from the donor assistance that always supports the education system here.
“The other big step that we have taken is to forgive the TELS loan for all our students in the country.
“In our view it was a very badly managed scheme where close to $190million was provided to students who never completed their courses.
“We were told by the TELS board that they were not sure where those 21,000 students are after spending that $190m and a small percentage of those students were paying the loans back.
“So what we have done was to lift that burden from the shoulders of almost 53,000 students, their parents and guardians and allocated $148m in the budget for scholarships and grants based on merit.
“So all of these rumors that came out after the elections saying that the criteria would be based on race, ethnicity and other criteria’s were false and malicious.
“This means that all of the students based on the criteria that have been put forward by Government will be able to get scholarships and the only condition of that scholarship is that the student will be bonded to serve Fiji.”
