Five Bruneians to intern for Aussie firm

FIVE Bruneians will learn the basic skills of identifying existing or potential economic sites and commercial growth areas in a one-week internship programme with Australian consultancy firm SGS Economics & Planning.

As appointed consultant for think-tank Centre of Strategic and Policy Studies' (CSPS) study on land optimisation for industrial and commercial development, the firm will facilitate the programme, train the interns on fundamental skills using the concept of economic modelling and geographic information systems (GIS) mapping software.

The interns are Researcher Dr Sophiana Chua Abdullah and Associate Researcher Koh Wee Chian from CSPS, JPKE Acting Senior Economic Officer Asnawi Kamis, Town Planning Officer Noraisah Hj Bujang and Surveyor Hjh Roseidah Hj Kamis from the Ministry of Development.

Asked how the trip would benefit the interns, CSPS Senior Researcher Dr Diana Cheong yesterday said the GIS mapping is suited to the Survey Department as they would provide base maps.

"When they go to Australia, the interns will come back and apply the tools they learned from our land study and we have got the base map for Brunei, so our land study is different, specifically for industrial and commercial purposes,"she said.

"They will learn how to map out existing lands on potential economic sites and commercial growth areas and the clusters they've identified."

However, she said it was still too early to identify the clusters, but they would be able to learn the basics and "know how to map it out and link it to economic growth industries".

"Another value added thing about this trip is that they get to see how another country is doing. The reason we chose Australia because they are renowned for their land planning and in some areas are similar to Brunei in some areas,"she said.

An example of this was a trip to Logan Park, which was reclaimed from a dumping site and turned into a successful industrial park.

Dr Cheong said SGS provided the internships where three government officers will be doing GIS to specifically work on Brunei's land study.

"We are giving internships to two of our officers, one for GIS and the other is for economic modelling, but we have given out three of the internships to our stakeholders,"she said.

She said the internship programme was in relation to CSPS's land optimisation strategy for industrial and commercial growth.

For the GIS training, the officers will visit the consultant's headquarters in Brisbane and Melbourne, while those focused on economic modelling will only be going to Brisbane.

Dr Cheong also revealed that sending the interns was the first of CSPS's initiatives.

"We are going to do more projects such as this which are more collaborative and is value-added to our projects," she said.

"We believe that it is very important to have our actual stakeholders in this study so that they can contribute throughout the study rather than just handing it over to consultants to do."

The interns were briefed on their trip by SGS Director Sasha Lennon yesterday.The Brunei Times