By Lailatul Fitriyah Matsaini
SEGAMAT, 18 March 2018: It’s really a rare occasion for Communication students to have had the opportunity to be part of a national event. Yesterday, 29 students from Public Relations campaign strategies class had a chance to be associated with the Ministry of Health’s field project at the National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) fiesta where they were exposed to carrying out an evaluation exercise involving public relations process for publicity campaign.
The two-day event held in Segamat was launched by the Minister of Health, Datuk Seri Dr. S. Subramaniam on Saturday (17 March) which also saw the presence of the Finance Ministry’s Secretary-General, Tan Sri Dr. Mohd Izwan Serigar Abdullah, and Health Ministry’s Secretary-General, Datuk Seri Dr. Chen Chaw Min.
The Ministry of Health Malaysia’s booths were the biggest, among all. The booths were categorised into five sections; Social Media Booth, Health-Screening Booth, Physical Activities Booth, Stop Smoking Clinic Booth and Anti-Smoking Campaign for Kids Booth.
The spokesperson of NBOS, Raja Izzah said that the focus of the fiesta was to provide easy access to government agencies for those from the rural and remote areas of the country. She said, “Our target groups are not people from urban areas as they are fully aware of the services provided by government agencies.”
According to Dr. Subramaniam, nearly 80 agencies from both government and corporate sectors were involved in the fiesta. “We want to close the gap between people in Segamat area and the agencies without they having to drive the extra miles away to get the services of the Health Ministry.
Madam Mazni Buyong, who was the class lecturer, said that this event was a good platform for public relations students to gain hands-on experience by learning the public relations process in detail.
Meanwhile, Assistant Programme Manager for the class project, Zarith Sofea Mohamad Zamri said, “We are truly honoured to be part of this big event. It’s not that easy, especially for the Ministry of Health to give us this opportunity. We learned a lot not only on how to properly conduct an event, but also to measure the success of the event as a whole.”
Almost 15,000 visitors attended the NBOS fiesta on Saturday and more are expected to attend during the second day of the event. This was not the first time NBOS did such an event as they had done it before in Kluang (Johor), Pekan (Pahang), and Bagan Datuk (Perak).***