The director-general of Papua New Guinea's Office of Higher Education says he expects the government will place an increased focus on tertiary and technical education institutions in the next few years.
William Tagis says the government will need to do that to fill the large gap in PNG's skilled labour market exposed by the massive Liquified Natural Gas project development.
Mr Tagis says the government has only recently started allocating reasonable levels of money and resources to the Higher education sector.
He says his office has short and long term strategies in place to help meet the demand for skilled labour which major resource extraction projects bring to PNG.
"We expect that maybe by the next, say, two to three years, there will be shifts towards technical skills training and higher education if we are going to achieve the target of graduating an additional two hundred and sixty-five thousand more jobs."
William Tagis
