Parents to take Morobe govt to court over scholarship scheme

DISGRUNTLED parents are going to sue the officers of the Morobe provincial government who were involved in a purported scam.
More than 100 parents from Lae, Bulolo and Finschhafen districts were to have met with a lawyer yesterday to collectively sue the officers.
They named the officers and proffered receipts of payments of between K100 and K300 being 10% of school fees to high and secondary schools in Morobe as well as colleges throughout the country.
The parents also said that they bashed up a woman officer two weeks ago and even had her locked up by the Lae police.
The parents are angry that they had been duped into a scam being “advertised orally under various names as the Queen’s Fund, England Fund, UK Fund.”
None of these funds ever existed, a former policeman who had paid for fees, said.
They were told before the start of the academic year last year to pay 10% of school fees into an account at the Bank South Pacific to be eligible for a scholarship scheme that was funded by the Queen.
The former policeman said he was “one of those that was duped”.
Hundreds of students “on the scholarship” from Baiyune, Sialum, and Wasu high schools and Dregerhafen and Grace Memorial secondaries, were not allowed to sit for their national Grades 10 and 12 examinations because they had not fully paid their school fees.
About 70 students from Balob Teachers College and others from National Polytech, Mt Hagen and Goroka technical colleges were sent home last year because their fees were not met by the England Fund.
The parents had paid 10% of the fees to the officers in the governor’s office and received receipts. The officers had assured the payees that the fees would be settled.
Out of all the complaints in the past month, only one person confirmed that hey paid for his young sister’s school fees at Wasu High.