College heads to be charged

By JINA AMBA
THE teacher education division has been instructed to charge and suspend teachers’ college principals for accepting students with low marks and without proper documents, the education secretary says.
Dr Uke Kombra said these were college principals from Balob, Chimbu, Enga and Dauli.
“I have given instructions to our teacher education division to charge and suspend the principals of Balob, Enga and Dauli teachers’ coleges,” he said “We want to charge the principal of Chimbu Teachers’ College but fortunate for him that he has left, so we can’t charge someone who has left the system.
“They have to justify why they took those actions. Their actions are criminal.
“The Criminal Code Act Section 462 where it says that if you fraudulently or deface a document you can be criminally charged.
“We don’t have the resources to pursue that at this point but they have committed a crime.”
Meanwhile, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of PNG through the office of the church secretary said they were supportive of the bold stand taken.
Church secretary Bernard Kaisom said teachers were supposed to be experts in their field of study before they impart this knowledge to our students.
He said looking back to the ’80s and the early ’90s, they had expatriate teachers in secondary and national high schools.
“They were experts and they imparted knowledge to us who are in high positions now throughout PNG in private, business, NGOs and faith-based organisations,” Kaison said.
He said, unfortunately, the learning standard had dropped because of the practices that the Department of Education had just uncovered.
“The church through my office fully supports this action,” Kaison said.
“Our own teachers’ college (Balob) has been in the headlines for the last few days.
“I fully take this responsibility and will ensure that we clean up this mess in Balob and get the integrity of Balob back to the glory days of the past.
“We will look at the governance and the operational systems that take in the non-school leavers and rectify as a matter of urgency.
“This may mean working with the department to suspend and terminate all those involved to show that the church is serious about this and wants to partner the Government to develop the country.”