NHC staff to be put on new payroll system, says Tkatchenko

The National Housing Corporation (NHC) staff will now be on the government Alesco payroll system after almost nine years of operating as a State-owned company.
Minister of Housing and Urban Development Justin Tkatchenko, who announced the new changes last Friday, said NHC had been struggling to raise revenue internally to be self-funding.
He said the NHC had been selling off properties to pay for salaries and wages for the staff which was unacceptable.
“NHC had been operating on its own for many years but around 2011 and 2012 it could no longer maintain its operations,” Tkatchenko said.
“When the Government got in, one of the instructions was to have NHC on the Government payroll.
“Now when the new structure goes through, all those 219 positions will go through proper process under Government payroll system.
“There will be no more selling of public assets, no more selling of houses that we can use to house our workers,” he said.
Tkatchenko said those assets would remain and the Government would pay the wages under the new structure.
“That will relieve a huge burden to all the staff especially the new staff coming in to receive their fortnightly salaries on time.
“Now that we’ve got a brand new staff structure, we’ve got the bonus as well.
“We have killed two birds with one stone.”
Tkatchenko called on professional Papua New Guineans to apply for the positions in NHC under the new restructure.
“So once we get the administration in place then we will be able to roll out all these housing projects developments, start getting a proper inventory of all our assets that NHC owns which is in the billions of kina.
“We clean up our backyard and then move full steam ahead towards 2020 and beyond,” Tkatchenko said.