In recognition to World Surveyor’s Day held on the 21st of March, students and staff from the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (PNG UOT) in Lae marked the importance of a surveyor, their job, and the work field.
UOT Lecturer, Surveying Section Head Mr. Navua Allen Kapi said the day signifies how surveyors contribute to the development of this nation.
“Most of the development takes place on the surveyor’s contribution.”
“Surveyors play an important role especially in rural areas to collect data, mainly in road constructions, building boundary definitions which are then assembled and then sent over to the engineers and designers.”
Mr. Kapi said that the surveying course itself is the oldest profession in the country and the department was very proud to host the day because UOT is the only university in the country that provides the surveyor’s course and produces a lot of surveyor’s in the industry.
The course itself has diploma and a degree course, but the diploma course was phased out in 2014. The degree course is 4 years and is accredited to a global standard. So, most of the students that are produced out from this course can be engaged to international survey companies as well.
“The course itself is unique because it deals with the Earth’s measurement, and it is of importance because we build up students from their moto skills. Surveying is not a just a plain surveying that we do, we have other branches of surveying that makes up the main surveying which is engineering, mining, hypo graphic surveying and many more which contributes to the students learning.”
Mr. Kapi said, the surveying course itself produces and average of 25 graduands and sometimes it drops down to 20 based on the intakes and the re-intake of students. However, the major problem that these graduating students face is employment.
“Employment is one of the challenges that these students face after completing their studies and the government seriously needs to look into the surveying profession. We see that mainly the construction and mining companies are the ones that put out their GDP’s to take up the graduands that we produce every year. ”
Mr. Kapi said that they marked the day to mainly share the importance of surveying in the country.