Dr. Ehsan Buhaliqa
Al-Yaum
Everybody is talking about the drop in oil prices these days and the cuts in gas, water and electricity subsidies. The reasons behind these actions have nothing to do with increasing government revenues. We are about to enter a new stage when we should reduce our dependency on oil. Government spending relies heavily on oil proceeds and the private sector depends on government spending. The new era ushers in a new type of dependency - it is not on oil but on non-oil sectors. We have to rely on ourselves and our abilities.
I think many of us do not see ourselves tidying up our rooms, or washing and ironing our clothes, not because we do not have time, but because we are either lazy or egoists.
This negative practice has become widespread among school students. If a teacher gives students a certain assignment to do, at least some of the students will get the assignment done outside by paying someone else to do it. The same thing holds true for college students who pay others to do statistical or technical research for them.
Our students are making a big mistake when they engage in such practices. They are not aware of the unethical aspects of their actions, let alone the intellectual property rights involved. When a teacher asks the class to work on an assignment, he wants to teach them certain skills. They should not pay someone else to do it for them and waste the opportunity to learn and acquire new skills.
A candidate for a position at the college where I work once handed me a detailed research paper on an economic problem and asked me to read it and give my opinion. His research was full of minute details and economic conclusions. Apparently, he was well-versed in SPSS Statistics (a software package used for statistical analysis) or so I thought. When I admired his SPSS skills, he did not know what I was talking about. He did not know anything about SPSS.
Some members of the public pay money to buy postgraduate research and claim they have done it themselves. We must raise public awareness, especially among school and college students, about this negative practice.
More importantly, we must all join forces and combat it. It is not going to be an easy task, especially in light of so many online sites where one can buy a postgraduate degree or research. We should incorporate authors’ rights and intellectual property rights in our school curricula.
We must instill the importance of productivity in our children’s minds. I remember how parents used to teach their children the skills of selling and buying something in the old days. My parents used to give me money to buy stuff and sell it in the neighborhood just to introduce me to an important life skill. When will our dependency on oil stop? When will we learn to be productive and self-reliant?
