Association welcomes house survey

THE Public Employees Association (PEA) has welcomed a public sector housing demand survey to be conducted by the Department of National Planning and Monitoring.
Association acting president Anna Igo said in a statement yesterday the survey was long overdue to address the accommodation crises faced by public servants throughout the country.
Igo also called on the Department of Personnel Management to disclose the findings of the joint union-management housing committee to national planning to assist with the survey.
The committee was formed in 2009 to look into the housing or accommodation crises in the public service.
She said that over the years, the association had been consistently urging the government to address the accommodation needs of its workforce.
“The sale of institutional housing and home ownership schemes had detrimental effect on the sustainability of the public sector workforce in the long run and the state is now faced with a problem created by bad policy decisions.
“The bulk of the public servants have ended up living in settlements or with wantoks and relatives due to the high cost of rentals on properties.
“The pay for public servants is too low even to afford a one-bedroom bedsitter and does not equate to current living conditions,” she said.
Igo said that while the public servants have been under the spotlight for lack of service delivery to the people of Papua New Guinea, the state had to be serious in addressing the needs of the public servants to motivate them to perform over and above expectations to realise their mandate.
“If the Government is serious and genuine in their fight against corruption in the public service, it will have to start with better pay and better conditions of employment to prevent public servants from indulging in under the table deals and project kickbacks reducing corruption.”
She said some public servants performed extremely well because they were on contract salaries with allowances including accommodation.