Share fee responsibility: Uguro

PAPUA New Guineans are naturally hard working, resilient and self-reliant, Education Minister Jimmy Uguro says.
He said this in an interview with The National last week when commenting on the Government tuition fee subsidy (GTFS) policy.
Uguro said the GTFS policy aimed to make the cost of education a shared responsibility between Government, parents, churches and local community.
“We want to disengage and cut out the dependency syndrome that we have systematically allowed into our PNG culture,” he said.
“The shift in the school financing policy by the Marape Government is deliberate, to get parents and communities to plough the soil and work hard, and contribute to reviving the economy instead of creating a ‘handout culture’ and a dependency syndrome.”
Uguro said Papua New Guineans were naturally hard working, resilient and self-reliant.
The GTFS policy would re-establish the missing link between the parents and schools while the Government would invest in raising the quality of education, building more schools and making school managers and boards more accountable.
Meanwhile, Uguro said provincial governments and district development authorities were the immediate authorities responsible for the education of students in the general education sector, within their respective jurisdictions.
“In the spirit of partnership, we urge every provincial governments and district development authorities to help their schools, especially parents who may struggle to pay their 38 per cent component of the fees.”