Ipatas: Enga govt will pay fees

By YVONNE HAIP
ENGA Governor Peter Ipatas has called on all schools in the province to not charge parents and guardians any project fees.
He said such fees had not been approved by the provincial executive council.
Ipatas said for Grades 11 and 12 students whose fees would be subsidised by 75%, the Enga government was prepared to pay them.
However, students would have to follow the normal processes of applying for school fees through the Ipatas Foundations’ Enga Children’s Fund.
Ipatas made this call after receiving complaints that schools were charging additional fees on parents when the school fees were being subsidised by the government.
He said all students fees were being paid for by the government and parents were not required to pay any amount to schools except to enrol their children.
Ipatas said Enga, which had always had a school fee subsidy programme, was ready to roll out the government’s free education policy.
He thanked the government for recognising the need to build the country’s human resource by pumping money into the education sector.
Ipatas called on the government to ensure that proper monitoring and audits were in place for the money allocated for school fee subsidies so that problems were avoided.
He said the Enga government would do its part by paying students fees that were not fully met by the government as it was the province’s aim to develop the human resource and it had been doing this over the past decade.