Students mull local options

The Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC) is working with related agencies to help 130 Thai students repatriated from war-torn Sudan continue their studies in the kingdom.

Rear Adm Somkiat Ponprayoon, SBPAC secretary-general, led a conference via Zoom on Friday with the attendance of representatives of the Foreign Affair Ministry's Department of South Asian, Middle East, and African Affairs, the Office of the Civil Service Commission, the Rajapark Institute of Yala and universities in the deep South.

The video conference aimed at discussing Thai students who were evacuated in April from Sudan due to the civil war there and how they could finish their studies.

According to Rear Adm Somkiat, most of the evacuees were in their last year of university.

Some of them decided to transfer their credits from Sudanese universities elsewhere as they were not willing to return due to the uncertainty posed by the war, he said.

An SBPAC study on the evacuees' education progress said most of them could not access their university websites due to the war. This means they cannot access basic education documents or their graduation status, Rear Adm Somkiat said.

The online discussion aimed to collect students' personal information so it can be passed on to members of related sectors in the future, including employers.

Muhammadroflee Waehama of the Faculty of Islamic Science of Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani said many of the students expressed interest in studying at the PSU Pattani campus, and the university has already provided them with credit transfer methods.