By JUNITA SOL GOMA
WITH Christmas upon us, some teachers who have worked hard all year will not be able to go home to spend this festive period.
Their leave entitlement have not been processed, and those affected in Port Moresby have warned that they will not teach next year.
Teachers in the capital last Friday demanded their superiors to raise cheques for their leave entitlements quickly or they will not attend classes next year.
The teachers complained that people in the Education office who were supposed to process the cheques had closed down their operations to attend to their end of year function last Friday.
“We are helpless in this situation and can do nothing to make things work,” the frustrated teachers told The National.
FinCorp house closed its gates last Friday to business but the teachers forced entry and started demanding their leave entitlements.
“We’ve been going and coming and waiting for the past two weeks and after getting assurances from the Education Secretary and all those big people that everything is being fixed, we still haven’t seen anything yet,” one teacher said.
“If you call giving leave entitlements to only 50 teachers out of the remaining 300 in a week, that is not service but a total letdown.”
The teachers said they did not have a union and were doing their follow-ups as a group but they were still not treated as professional people.
“Those people in the offices do not respect and value our services; they misuse funds and mismanage their office and all they are good for is covering up and hiding when confronted.”
The teachers were told to check for their entitlements before 4:06pm today but this didn’t calm them because “they had heard the same music before”.
Attempts to get comments from the director for the NCD Education office, Tau Naona, were spurned, telling The National to get comments from the ‘big people’.