Life after employment

By OGIA MIAMEL
Is everyone prepared for life after formal employment?
It’s a question one has to ask from time to time.
Life continues after employment whether you like it or not.
The steady fortnightly income will end and people have to look for means to sustain themselves, author Linda Ravu Tule says.
Tule,  from Kariku in Central, and mother of seven has nine grandchildren.
She may be the first Papua New Guinean woman to write a book on retirement.
Tule combines her experiences of working in private business, government departments as well as being unemployed and a volunteer in her community and church.
She sees that most Papua New Guineans do not prepare well for retirement. It is a big problem in communities.
Tule wants her book to help people prepare for life after retirement so they do not go into debt, maintain their living standards, live a comfortable life and have a swift transition into retirement.
Her book Life After Formal Employment is Real Prepare for it has six chapters that give steps to transition into retirement.
The book provides practical examples, real life stories and experiences of people as well as the author’s.
It includes seminars, trainings and workshops carried out by the author to prepare attendees and targeted readers for the realities of life after leaving formal employment.
She took three months to write the book and a decade of preparation and ground work to finally compile her experience and skills gained from conducting workshops on Prepare for life after employment and conducting a survey on the topic in 2015.
Tule says her employment started after she completing grade 10.
She worked as a receptionist for an electrical company in the 1970s and 80s called Burns Philp Business Systems.
She later became executive secretary where she had the opportunity to conduct trainings for new employees on how to use a computer and the basics of Microsoft applications.
She later joined Small Business Development Corporation and worked in the entrepreneur section for seven years.  Tule than was employment with the Department of Health working in AusAid-funded community projects.
She now works as a magistrate and human rights defender in Waigani and Ensisi Village Court.
She is also a church leader and supports the Urban Youth Employment Project by cooking lunch for the youths. Tule said the process of writing the book, launching and publishing it was not an easy task for her.
She faced challenges along the way because she did not have a job that generated a regular income.
Her children and husband were supportive of her and now she can finally reap the fruits of her labour. The book gained popularity among government departments, companies and individuals.
The Department of Health purchased the first 100 copies of her book followed by Department of National Planning and Monitoring, Central and Manus provincial governments and Oil Search Ltd.
Other individuals and companies have requested for her book both in Port Moresby and other provinces.
She is also engaged with human resource divisions of organisations, businesses and companies by providing trainings to their employees.
Tule says in developed countries employers prepare their employees well for retirement.
She said there are heaps of seminars conducted by experts in this field, however, this was not the case in Papua New Guinea.
She is currently writing another book on her 16 years of experience as a village court magistrate.