Students caught ‘forging’ fee figures on deposit slip

By JIMMY KALEBE
TWO students at a registered community college in Lae were caught forging school fee figures on a deposit slip on Wednesday.
Police confirmed taking one of the students in for questioning, while the other is still to show up.
Lae Community College supervisor Nicky Raka said the two students, after paying their K20 registration at the bank, altered over the written bank receipt.
He said it was K20 but the students forged their receipts to K800.
“It is a sorry state, but this is criminal in nature and these students have to be locked up by police and face the law,” Raka said.
While producing a bank statement confirming the payment of K20 by the two male students on Tuesday, Raka said a similar incident happened at the University of Goroka last year and may have happened in other major institutions around the country as well.
He blamed the tuition fee-free (TFF) policy as discriminatory in a sense that it only catered for Government schools and other registered institutions.
“Us like community colleges, and some flexible open distance education centres, missed out on TFF,” Raka said. “We paid for our teachers and other materials for the education of the children ourselves.
“That caused us to charge more on school fees.”
He said one way the government could help was to pay their teachers’ salaries so that they could charge a lower fee to students.