Dear Editor,

Why is the government too ignorant of its shortcomings and continues to pretend that it cares?

Well, at least, it does care about sending students on scholarship overseas, but thats not just it. Taking the responsibility to see that these human beings (students) are well taken care of in their overseas institutions is even more important than strking deals with the institutions (and their host countries) and paying tickets for them to travel there.

Recently we have heard of the plight of our students in Cuba through the media, having received no SIG allowance for almost a year. It took the government more than 7 months to seemingly address the issue.

Now we are hearing of students starving at USP, in Fiji, which hosts the highest number of Solomon Islanders studying overseas. This has been a common issue for them and it is still an ongoing one.

And even if that has been worse, the government is sending the highest number of students ever to PNG to study there and I am sure they will also suffer the same fate.

What will the government do now? Our cash flow problem is poor and very soon the government will have to pay out SBD$10 000 000 to our MPs for their terminal granst and ex-gratia payments.

My worry is this: will it (SIG) still be able to look after the welfare of its students given this circumstance? I am raising this issue because I really doubt that it does. But lets see what happens, may be our friends from Taiwan can fill-in-the-gaps once again and deliver us from trouble.

God Bless Solomon Islands