2000 unpaid teachers in Highlands ‘who need to eat’ stay home

MORE than 2000 auto-suspended teachers in the Highlands region “who need to eat” have not been teaching, according to the PNG Teachers’ Association.
The asociation’s Highlands regional secretary, John Melson, said thousands of students were being affected because teachers were not turning up for classes.
He said the majority of the affected teachers were staying home and not attending classes.
He said that from the reports he received from his PNGTA branch presidents in the Highlands’ provinces, Enga was missing 430 teachers, Eastern Highlands 300, Chimbu 200 and Western Highlands 906.
Many of them were new graduates and about 200 were long-serving teachers. They were among 11,000 teachers nationwide put off the payroll in the last pay because of paperwork problems.
Melson said that he had not received any reports about teachers in Jiwaka, Hela, and Southern Highlands. “It’s very sad to see many of our teachers in the Highlands staying at home because they need to eat in order to work,” he said.
“How do you expect them to stand in front of the blackboard and teach without nothing in their stomach?”