Bedridden and abandoned by the system
By IRENE GILICHIBI
THIS is the story of a dedicated woman who feels she has been abandoned by the system.
Sakare Giegere woes began in 2002. She was a teacher at the time at Biawaria Community school, in the rugged hinterland of Morobe province.
Since no other teacher was willing to go to such a remote school, she was compelled to teach four grades that year.
This year she would have chalked up her 35th year with the Education Department.
However her teaching career ended when she was shot in the back by gunmen in her home in 2002.
The incident left her paralysed and since then the Education Department has ignored her plight and the Labour and Employment Department has refused to pay her any worker’s compensation.
She was only fifty-three years old at that time and a single mother of a first year student at the Balob Teachers’ College.
Now six years later, a bedridden Sakare has decided to speak of the ordeal on the Sunday evening of August 18, 2002 that would paralyse her lower body for the rest of her life.
Assignments and tests had to be marked and lessons prepared for the week ahead. With no overtime, teachers are still obliged to sit up and attend to these during weekends.
She was in her house at 8pm preparing the next day’s lessons when five armed men attacked her sister who was in their outdoor kitchen preparing their evening meal.
With its isolation and proximity to the bushes, snakes often slipped into the house and the shriek from her sister could only mean there was a snake in the kitchen.
Hurrying out of the house, lamp in one hand, Sakare rushed over to the kitchen.
There she saw an armed man pointing a gun at her sister’s head.
She ran forward and grabbed the barrel of the gun. During the struggle her sister was let loose.
It was then that she recognised the gunman. That riled her even further and she gave him a shove.
From behind her, another gunman fired a shot at her penetrating Sakare’s back at the level of her thoracic vertebrae to her lumbar vertebrae.
The impact sent her staggering to the kitchen floor. The gunmen fled the scene.
“I was in great pain not knowing how my relatives cared for me till day break,” she recalled.
Due to its isolation, medical help could not be sought until the next day when education officials in Morobe were alerted and a helicopter was sent to airlift her to Angau hospital in Lae.
This was to be the only help from the department and the district for the next six years.
At Angau, she could not be operated on as pellets from the bullet had spread and going under the knife was considered dangerous after consultation with Australian experts.
She was put on medication which healed the wound but failed to stop the pain and her lower body from becoming paralysed.
Whilst at the hospital, she was put off the teaching service payroll without any notice. She was put back on the payroll after her brother made enquiries but a few months later her salary ceased altogether. A resignation letter was later submitted without her consent.
She spent four months and four days at the hospital but had to leave and stay with her family at Taraka as she could no longer meet the hospital charges.
She was discharged but was required to visit twice a week for reviews to assess her progress and condition.
She was also advised to undergo physiotherapy exercise.
The first few months were manageable but soon her funds were exhausted and trips to the hospital for reviews became irregular due to transportation and costs incurred.
Her first months after being discharged were spent in a shanty in a settlement on the Busu mountain at Bumayong because she had no relatives to stay with.
Besides her home in Garaina was a fair way away and also isolated so seeking medical help from there would have been impossible.
With her savings she built a house to replace the shanty and bought a house at Oak street, where she has spent the last six years bedridden.
To this day, the gunman responsible for her current condition has not been arrested and charged as police claim they lacked funds at that time to investigate further.
“But when funds were made available, they flew by helicopter to the village and expected the criminals to surrender.”
“It takes time to arrest and in most cases criminals don’t just surrender,” her brother James Giegere, obviously disgusted said.
Things got more complicated when attempts by her siblings to seek compensation from the Workers Compensation were turned down.
Their response was that employees are only compensated for accidents during working hours, not after hours.
“But the fact remains that she was at the premises of the school preparing next day’s lessons when she encountered the incident,” James said.
Her personal savings have been exhausted on medical expenses.
Knowing that she will spend her remaining years bedridden, Sakare is angry that the Education department and the district has failed to recognise the services that she delivered.
“I gave all my heart to my people to go and teach at Biawaria when no other teacher posted there remained for a full year.”
“The only help I got from the district and the department was being airlifted to Angau and that was it,” she said with tears streaming down her face.
After all their attempts to bring the gunmen to justice and seek compensation, her sibings who have been very supportive of her, have given up, exhausted at being hoodwinked and given the run-around.
They are frustrated and are appealing for justice to be done for their sister.
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