Difference Between “Work Visa” and “Business Visa” Is the Difference Between Student Victory and Failure. Report on the Friday Forum At Unitech

By Year 4 Unitech student

The very important gathering in 2 years of Unitech saga opened late on Friay afternoon. It was led by the attorney general Kerenga Kua who did most of the talking.   Also speaking was Sir Nagora Bogan who is heading the new Unitech council and pushed back the attempt by old council Ralph Saulep to take ove again.  Sir Nagora was given the warm welcome by the crowd of many hundreds.  We all support this man who has stood up to the evil influences.

The speakers, mainly Attorney General, told us that the Unitech problem had been solved.  The government had resisted the attempt by old council member Saulep to be the Chancellor again.   Mr Saulep was in Port Moresby but government successfully moved for the first meeting of the new council to be on Unitech campus.  Mr Saulep would be too frightened to enter the Unitech campus.  He was absent from the meeting but other members of the old council appeared and dulyelected Sir Nagora as the new Chancellor.

Names of the new council members were read, we all approved although we don’t know much about any of these people. A lot of them are mystery names. Jean Kekedo is one of neames people know.

The Attorney general then spoke about the matter that most concerns all students.  He announced with great pride that government had granted Dr Schram a business visa.  He further reported that Dr Schram had filed his application materials and would soon be arriving. He said we students had achieved a big win with our boycott.

Lots of happy cheers went up when this was announced.   We were all happy after a month of not going to school and doing everything we could to pressure government to accept our demands. What we did not know at the time is that we were being tricked.   This was the first of 3 tricks that the government did to us on Friday.

Next came the OHE Minister Mrs Gore and her speech.  First she told us that really she felt about us students like a mother and did appreciate what we were doing and just worried about us.  She told us indirectly that she was not happy with the advice she had been getting when she had come to Lae before and did not meet with students.  She must have been referring to advise given to her by OHE director Dr David Kavurnamur who was at the council meeting.   However Dr Kavurnamur quietly left the forum in the middle of the talks.  Maybe he felt to shamed. He knows he mislead Minister Gore. Also so many of us have read the articles about this man on PNGBLOGS. We now see how this is the man responsible for blocking Dr Schram to come back for more than a year.

Minister Gore called up Sir Nagora for a special presentation.   Before our eyes she gave  him a copy of the Sevua report.  Everyone was happy to see this. Very few students realised we had been tricked again.  Number 2 trick.

The government speakers and Sir Nagora acted like boycott was now ending because they had given us what we wanted.  They said it was time to go back to school. Most students had no problem with this and started making plans that classes would start on Monday. This was trick #3.

Only Eddie Nagual seemed to see what was going on really.  He must have seen all 3 tricks because he said quietly that boycott would continue until Dr Schram was back on campus.

Eddie’s statement was confusing to many.  During the weekend there was lots of talk and messaging about the forum. We finally realised we were tricked on Friday by these government presenters.   Let me explain what happened.

Our boycott had two simple demands:

DEMAND 1 - No Schram, No School

DEMAND 2 - Release the Sevua Report.

We did not think to figure out that government might look for sneaky ways to say they were meeting our demands but in the background not really.  There was to much talk about win win without proper understanding of what that meant.   Win win situation does not mean sneaky wins by the government that they do not tell us about fully and we only agree to because we are unclear.

With “No Schram, No School” the government said that Schram coming back to PNG satisfied our demand.  We didn’t think clearly and realise that the government was tricking in 2 ways:

They did not intend to give Dr Schram a work visa, which is the only visa that allows him to return to work as our VC.
They did not make it clear he could come back to campus and live here.  All they said is that we would be welcoming him back.   They did not state specifically where we would welcome him back.

Instead, they are only offering business visa.  Like stupids, we all cheered because we were ignorant that business visa does not let Dr Schram function like a normal VC.  His hands are tied from doing any employment under business visa.   Now we see that the government did not change its position at all from the previous week. They only pretended things were moving ahead.

The second trick was in response to our Demand #2.   Minister Gore acted like the Sevua report was released.  We didn’t think about it enough to realise that our demand was meaningless unless everyone could read what was in the Sevua report. Itt was not enough to hand Sevua report copy from one hand to another.  Nice ceremony but all students are still in the dark except for small parts that have been leaked to PNGBLOGS.

The final tricks was for the government representatives to pretend like everything was now solved so we could go back to class.  This was done to make it look like we had won and it was win win.  Actually we have not won either demand.  Shram’s enemies are even more unhappy than before. Only government seems happy.

The question now with many students is why the government continues to trick.  More than 1 week ago they said clearly that Dr Schram could not come back to campus because of some kind of court order.  They are not being transparent and honest.  What court order is blocking things?  What exactly does this court order say?   Why will they not show us this court order that supposedly keeps Dr Shram from getting a proper visa to let him be our VC not just in name only?

We have learnt from this experience that our government lies and tricks every time they have a chance.  They threaten to take away our scholarships or kick us out of school hoping we would give up.  They tried to split the students so they could divide and conquer us.  They did not talk straight.

Only when we did the boycott and kept up the pressure no matter what they threatened did government finally start moving and give in to our demands.  Without the boycott we would have failed.  This is a valuable lesson for the future for all students.

Most student leaders seem to know that the moment we step down from our boycott our power to force the government to get Schram as a meaningful VC or to make public what is inside the Sevua report will be lost.

We cannot end the boycott until every piece of the solution is in place in all the details.

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