More than 220 Gumine students get help from MP

MORE than 220 students from Chimbu’s disaster-stricken Gumine received school fee help as relief assistance from local MP Lucas Dawa Dekena earlier this month.
Gumine District Development Authority chief executive officer Daing Kil, on behalf of Dekena, who is the education minister, handed cheques totalling K1 million to tertiary institutions, including universities and private schools, in which the district’s children had enrolled.
Kil said the assistance is part of a relief package to help parents cut off by landslides and have coffee, food and livestock properties destroyed.
“The parents must be at ease with their sons and daughter attending tertiary institution at this time of the disaster.
“We appropriated K500,000 in the first batch and another K500,000 in the second batch.
“A total of K1 million is being disbursed to institutions where Gumine students are attending,” Kil said.
Gumine Tertiary Students Tuition Fee Assistance Programme representative Kumson Moses said the cheques will be deposited into the institutions’ accounts.
He said the beneficiary list with a copy of the cheque will be sent to the institutions for confirmation and reconciliation purposes.
The University of Goroka – with 84 Gumine students – has the highest number students from the district who are receiving assistance.