NEW DELHI - When the Papua New Guinea foreign minister arrived in India, he made a beeline not for India’s technology and commercial capitals but to a small Tamil Nadu village to learn about a new non-formal education system.

For Samul T Abal, minister of foreign affairs, trade and immigration, one of the highlights of the first ministerial trip from Papua New Guinea in 30 years was a trip down south, where he visited the Dr. Chandran Devanesan Rural Community College in Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district.

In fact, Xavier Alphonse, the director of the coordinating agency for community colleges — Indian Centre for Research and Development of Community Education (ICRDCE) — is already known to the Papua New Guinean government. He had visited Papua New Guinea last year to oversee the government’s new scheme to set up a chain of community colleges.

“I actually came to know about this initiative through an American friend in Singapore… He (Xavier Alphonse) is setting up two community colleges in our electorates,” Abal told IANS in an interview, referring to his and Prime Minister Somare’s constituencies.

Thirty-four Papua New Guineans have already been trained at ICRDCE, who will be working in the two pioneering community colleges that are under construction.

“After seeing those two colleges, other leaders also want the same in their provinces. So, right now we are planning for 13 more colleges,” he said.

Noting that it was a pet project of the Papua New Guinean prime minister, Abal said: “My PM has accepted this concept from India as something which is good for us to borrow.”

Abal said that India’s assistance and technical expertise in setting up those colleges will be highly appreciated. “We have 60-70 percent of children missing out from education. We want to look at ways to incorporate them into economic activity and nation-building. This will supplement the formal education system.”

During his field visit in Tamil Nadu, Abal was impressed at the way lives were being changed by providing access to education in economically backward areas.

“One of them was very touching. The mother came up and shared her story, about her son who had given up studies. Now, he was earning Rs 5,000, working for a computer company — far from his wildest dreams,” he said.

In fact, he has asked his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna to schedule a trip to Papua New Guinea this year, so that he could be taken to those areas where the Indian-assisted colleges will be functioning.