Wintec prepares to sack lauded security education staff

Expert security education staff that Wintec management were lauding just weeks ago will shortly be made redundant if a Wintec proposal goes ahead.

Wintec intends to close its entire securities team in the school of trades, disestablish all the staff and contract out the teaching of current students to outside providers.

Yet late last month Wintec concluded an international agreement with Malaysia’s Open University for its staff to provide security programmes as part of a new educational partnership. At the time Wintec described its staff as ‘subject matter experts’ who provided ‘tailored training and experiential training’.

This is the second time the securities team in Wintec’s school of trades have been restructured, with three staff taking voluntary redundancy late last year. This new proposal will remove a further five staff based in Auckland (1), Hamilton (2), Tauranga (1)and Christchurch (1).

The Open University of Malaysia described Wintec’s staff as experts and the polytechnic as prestigious. Wintec is now planning to hand over the partnership programme to an outside agency.

Under the partnership agreement, Wintec would have assisted the Open University of Malaysia in providing training for its lecturers, as well as giving aid in developing the programme’s contents to suit local needs.

Further, as part of the agreement, staff from the Open University of Malaysia would visit Wintec’s Hamilton campus each year to gain first-hand experience in Wintec’s security management training and applied education.

TEU national president Sandra Grey says that Wintec’s failure to plan strategically and invest in its highly respected staff is hurting its reputation, and that of other New Zealand education providers.

“Malaysian security experts presumably wanted to collaborate with Wintec’s prestigious and expert security management teachers,” said Dr Grey. “Soon those staff may all be gone and our Malaysian colleagues may find they have an agreement with an outside agency and new staff they do not know. It hurts Wintec’s reputation and New Zealand’s tertiary education reputation overseas.”