KUCHING, August 25: Sarawak Energy is committed to support educational programmes, especially those that inculcate interest in science subjects, as it wanted to help create a vast pool of highly-skilled manpower to propel the state to developed status.
SEB Power chief executive officer James Ung said Sarawak Energy itself had a lot of initiatives where it leverages on digital technology to automate processes.
“We have moved on to smart power grid, and we have embarked on the ‘Internet of Things’ (IOT) and adopted cloud technology.
“So we aim to produce a digital savvy workforce, students and Sarawakians, as a whole. Partnering with The Learning Curve (TLC) for SCIENCE, Sarawak Energy hopes to play significant roles in advancing science, technology, engineering and mathematics education,” he said at the launching of Sarawak Community Innovation Engineering Competition Exhibition (SCIENCE) at CityOne Megamall here today.
About 300 students from private, public and international schools here are participating in the exhibition organised by TLC and sponsored by Sarawak Energy.
An engineer himself, Ung hoped SCIENCE would encourage the student participants to pursue science and engineering as choice of studies and future professions.
Meanwhile, TLC co-founder Kenneth Chai advised the student participants to solve the various science-related problems among themselves, just like in a real workplace.
He said one of the goals of SCIENCE was to expose the students to real world problems and how to realistically solve the problems.
“When I talked about real world applications, I meant the whole thing, including teamwork experience outside the comforts of their homes, away from their parents and classrooms with their teachers. I want to bring them (students) out to the real world.
“A few years down the road, all you students are going to go to universities. After that you guys are going to join the workforce. There you will realize that the real world is not the same and as comfortable as you wanted or expected it to be. You don’t get to choose your colleagues, managers and customers.
“Most importantly, you don’t get to complain to your parents when something happens. You have to deal with everything yourself,” said Chai.
As much as parents want to shield their kids from all negativities, Chai believed that children should experience and learn to solve them as this was part of learning and growing up.
“SCIENCE is all about believing in our students, our young children, and empowering their young minds. To those who couldn’t participate this year, I hope we can accommodate more projects and students next year,” he said. — DayakDaily
