KUCHING – The Sarawak Business Federation (SBF) and Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus have agreed in principle to work together in meeting their respective objectives following a dialogue at the university, recently.
In welcoming the SBF delegation headed by its president Datuk Abang Karim bin Tun Haji Openg, Swinburne Sarawak Deputy Vice-Chancellor and CEO Professor John Wilson said the university aims to have more connections with business and industry and hopes to develop the link.
“We look forward to working with SBF, and to further develop Sarawak with the creation of additional talent through our graduates in particular,” Professor Wilson said.
Apart from tertiary education, Professor Wilson said the university caters to business and industry through its range of short courses, postgraduate programs, specialist consultancy services and research expertise.
Datuk Abang Karim found the visit, which included a tour of the campus, to be meaningful and informative and hoped that there will be more opportunities to discuss business and development opportunities rapidly taking place in the state, with the university.
“We in the business sector are looking forward to the sort of people we can employ and who will help us move forward. One of the SBF’s objectives is to prepare our businesses in order not to be left behind by the aggressive move of the government in this transformation process.
“I must say that personally I have been observing the university and I must say that Swinburne has been able to face the challenges of being a tertiary institution that caters to the needs of the Sarawak in terms of human resource training,” Datuk Abang Karim said.
Saying that the thrust of development in Sarawak has been to transform the economy to a digital one, he added: “I believed that Swinburne will be able to position itself to provide the required manpower so that the transformation process of Sarawak will develop smoothly.”
He thanked Datuk Philip Ting, Vice-President of the SBF, for being the intermediary between Swinburne Sarawak and SBF.
According to Datuk Ting, who also sits on the Swinburne Sarawak board of directors, SBF is a federation of about 13 chambers of commerce and trade associations.
“Between the various members of SBF, it probably employs about 80% of all private sector employees and contributes about 90% of the state’s private sector GDP. So, it is a very significant organisation that truly represents the business sector in Sarawak.”
He said that the link between SBF and Swinburne Sarawak has to be relevant and on a win-win basis for both sides.
“The last thing we want to see is each of us working in a vacuum.”
“We were concerned that with the formation of such an important organisation (SBF) it would be a waste if many of the initiatives that has been aggressively pushed out by the state government is wasted,” said Ting, who helped to set up Swinburne Sarawak.