Research institute queries expats’ part-time work

By HELEN TARAWA
THE future of two expatriates brought in by the National Research Institute as researchers is uncertain after the institute discovered they have been using their free time to work with the University of PNG.
Institute director Doctor Osborne Sanida said he had raised the matter with the Immigration Department.
Chief Migration Officer Solomon Kantha, when asked whether the two could be breaching any entry conditions, said it was up to the NRI to deal with them under their contract.
He said he would discuss the matter with Sanida.
Labour Secretary Mary Morola said the department had issued them work permits “as researchers”.
“It is the responsibility of those who engaged them (NRI) to ensure they (abided) by their contract of employment as researchers, because the duties they do are bound in the contract,” she said. “For us at Labour, we issue work permits according to the positions applied for. It’s the employing organisation that should ensure that they are within the confines of their contact.”
She said there was nothing that the department could do.
“But we expect that they perform their duties as researchers as indicated in our records,” Morola said.
Professor Lekshmi Pillai, the executive dean at the School of Business and Public Policy at UPNG, said the two researchers were teaching in the Master of Economics and Public Policy programme “with the knowledge of NRI”.
When questioned yesterday, the two argued that they were engaged with university work in their own free time.
One said the NRI had nothing to do with what they did “after hours” but they had “out of courtesy” informed the NRI deputy director.
Another said: “We don’t really need a formal kind of arrangement because the teaching is done after hours, during our own time.”