Tourism Ministry and SINU Seals Collaboration

THE Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) and Solomon Islands National University (SINU) on Friday 12, November signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to commence as early as next year, 2022.

A statement by MCT highlighted the Permanent Secretary of the Tourism Ministry, Mr. Andrew Nihopara as stating that the MoU is critical at this time when fostering partnerships are important for meaningful engagements and collaborations between Government Ministries and other agencies representing key development sectors of Solomon Islands.

“The Ministry is fully committed to undertake and translate the obligations and commitments that are stipulated in the MoU into meaningful areas of collaboration, to commence as early as [year] 2022,” Nihopara said.

Meanwhile, the Dean of the Faculty of Business and Tourism Studies at SINU, Mr. Jerry Siota during the signing ceremony said the MoU is not in silo but it is to link up with the SINU strategic plan.

“It is to link with stakeholders such as the government ministries, private sector, regional and international universities,” Mr. Siota said.

The main areas covered in the signed MoU includes,

• Research collaboration, by encouraging meaningful research to serve the mutual interest of those from government and the Solomon Islands National University’s academic needs;

• Entrepreneurship award scheme to the final year tourism and hospitality students’ best proposals, as the incentives to the students at the highest level;

• Adopt a notion of becoming job creators than job seekers;

• Coordination annual student internships placements;

• Guest lecturers;

• Aggregation Short courses;

• Curriculum development;

• Jointly promoting symposiums, conferences, talk stories, and seminars of issues of importance for tourism;

• Participation of the students in trade fairs;

• And active engagements and dialogues for the development of the students.