Leave fares cost K7mil

The National Main Stories

By GLORIA BAUAI
MOROBE is paying out more than K7 million as the leave fare entitlements for 939 teachers in the province, says provincial education programme adviser Keith Tangui.
The amount was made available to the provincial education office last Friday.
The Morobe government contributed K2mil, he said.
The amount will be paid to two travel agencies who have been engaged to arrange travel bookings for the teachers to return to their home provinces for Christmas.
Teachers are now being issued confirmation letters for their leave fare entitlements.
“Each teacher will have to provide the ID and NID cards to receive their confirmation letters from the education office,” he said.
“PNG Travel Services will accept the confirmation letters from the Highlands region, Southern region, East Sepik and Vanimo. Prime Travel Services has advised us that confirmation letters from New Guinea Islands, Morobe and Madang will be accepted once all payments are cleared.”
Tangui said he was disappointed that the leave fares were paid in late.
Teachers will resume duties on Jan 25.
Students resume classes on Feb 1.

8 comments

  • What is the use of paying the Leave Fare entitlements to the travel agencies? Are the teachers themselves incapable of arranging travels for themselves?

  • Salary and conditioning legislative requirements of public servants including teachers nurses and other workers entitlement’s needs a parliamentary bill to review current standings given the events and expectations of the pasts has outlived the current salary and entitlements and the origins of birth, district and home province no longer are significant to workers choice and selection to take leave when most civil servants have permanent homes and family obligations to school, health, banking and other services are now in urban and cities such as Port Moresby. Teachers and or public servants requesting leave fares do it because of monetary value. Evidence of teachers leave fares paid in cheques and cashed in by providers as in Central and NCD in 2009 to 2015, instead of leave tickets to show such entitlements should be calculated as part of an individual workers salary and taxed. Teachers and public servants can plan and pay their tickets whenever they wish for as long as they are paid or on salary. No provincial and national departments should be worrying about leave fares if leave fares and other conditions of employment are part and parcel of salary and or wages, rather than separate funding placed as part of personnel emoluments which currently is proving a menace to administer by all nationwide.

  • Is it really too hard for this ‘Adviser’ to arrange on time leave fares for the teachers? He does get 10 months notice of Xmas.
    It is delayed every year due to incompetent administration in the Education Dept.

  • It makes 1 wonder how only 939 persons could rake in K7 million just like that.
    Education department must screen the leave fare applications thoroughly to ensure that there are no unnecessary dependents being claimed for leave fares. Even though, it is their right, people must not cheat the Government.

  • Use information technology to fix up this mess. Teachers leave fares is an on going issue year in year out in PNG. Why not use technology to ease this burden. Similar to fortnightly salaries.

  • This online selection process by the department of higher education has been a fluke. It has never been trialed and perfected outside the selection process. Since it’s inceptions there were many errors that need fixing. This process should be trialed with the Teachers leave fares than the selection process. The selection process is dealing with the dreams and hopes of the future of this country. It’s not something to experiment with. The government should seriously investigate this.

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