Estevao Nuno – National Member of Parliament MP Virgilio da Costa Hornai, President of Commission F (for health, education, culture, sports, veteran affairs and gender equality) called for the Ministry of Education (ME) to conduct an urgent assessment to all universities to determine those still using Bahasa Indonesia as the language of instruction.
In particular, said the MP, the assessment must look at the universities that have been accredited by the government and find out why they are still using Indonesian for academic instruction.
"I urge the Ministry of Education to ban the universities using Indonesian for instruction. It is a just a work language," urged MP Hornai at the National Parliament, Dili.
He added that if universities use Indonesian to instruct students, this will have a negative impact once they graduate.
UNITL student Jose Antonio said his university still uses Indonesian to deliver academic content to students. "All subjects from the third to eighth semester are taught using Indonesian because most of the lecturers have Master Degrees from Indonesia," said the student.
He added that UNITAL only uses two languages for academic instruction, Tetun and Indonesian, because most lecturers do not know how to speak the co-official language Portuguese.
In response to the issue, the Director General for Corporate Services of the ME Antoninho Pires said the ministry has since 2013 provided Portuguese classes for teachers and lecturers.
"Lecturers are still using Indonesian as an introduction language so students can understand other words in Portuguese," said the DG. The DG is convinced lecturers know how to speak Tetun and Portuguese and are using these languages to instruct students.