Min Aung Hlaing focuses on education in third visit to Arakan State this year

By Admin 31 Mar 2023

DMG Newsroom
31 March 2023, Sittwe

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing promised upgrades for Sittwe University in the Arakan State capital during the current academic year as he and officials from the regime’s Education Ministry visited campus on Thursday and met the rector and faculty members.

“He called for promoting the standards of morality among students, apart from their academic achievement, and promised to fulfil the requirements of the university. He talked a lot about upgrading the university,” an official at Sittwe University told DMG.

He also called for running doctorate courses in the 2023-24 academic year, recruiting more faculty as necessary, building more teaching facilities, and establishing a sportsground.

Min Aung Hlaing has visited Arakan State three times since January. His monthly visits followed an informal truce between Myanmar military and the Arakan State-based ethnic armed group, the Arakan Army, in November of last year.

Arakan State has been a region of relative calm in a country wracked by upheaval, violence and other forms of anti-regime animous since the military’s February 2021 coup. Since seizing power, the military has presided over the deterioration of an already badly hobbled national education system.

During his visit to Sittwe University, Min Aung Hlaing did not recognise these realities as he stressed the importance of human capital for the development of Arakan State.

Junta-appointed education minister Dr. Nyunt Pe also promised to build new lecture halls and provide internet access, according to the junta-controlled Myanma Alin newspaper.

The acting chairman of the Sittwe University Students Union said the union would wait and see if the junta chief would walk the walk with respect to his plans to upgrade the university.

“It is good to promote the physical and spiritual development of students. We, the students’ union, welcome it. But we want them to be as good as their word,” he said. “We will wait and see if it is just an empty promise.”