New facility for the Business School

THE Business School will be setting up a new business centre at the school in August, as a facility to train entrepreneurship to fresh vocational and technical institutions' graduates - with possible expansion of the programme to the public in the future.

In an interview with The Brunei Times, Hj Abdul Ishak Hj Idris, the school's acting principal, said that the business centre was a new project aimed at continuing entrepreneurial studies by offering short courses and trainings to fresh graduates from vocational and technical institutions (VTI).

"We target VTI graduates and also perhaps, in the future, the public as well," he said.

"In order to do this, we must have our own people and facilities. In terms of instructors, we already have our own staff. The only thing we need is the place, however, we already identified one of the rooms in the school. But again, the sustainability and viability of doing this all depends on the response (of the students) and demand as well from the graduates," the acting school principal added.

Awareness programmes such as roadshows will be conducted to VTI students six months prior to their graduation day, said Hj Abdul Ishak.

"We will market the programme before they leave their school, we go to their institution, and we give them the roadshow about the project, explaining our centre and those who are interested, they can register and come to us after their graduation," he said. "We are looking at probably August (to set up the business centre). Actually we've been having committee members' meeting with regard to this matter since last year. Last time we had this initiative called the Business Incubator Programme, so the programme will be incorporated inside the business centre as part of our activities."

The acting school principal said that the business centre would have proper training facilities, an office and will operate during the school's extra-curricular activities (ECA) period. The centre can operate outside normal office hours if there is a need to do so, Hj Abdul Ishak added.

"We want to come up with all the training programmes, we will identify all types of training like basic accounting then we will produce leaflet," he said. Asked whether the school would levy fees to become a member of the business centre, the acting principal said the fees are yet to be decided but will be minimal.The Brunei Times