Students: OHE tickets late

A GROUP of University of Papua New Guinea students fear they may miss registration because of the late delivery of their air tickets.
The students from Western Highlands, Enga and Jiwaka arrived yesterday at the Mount Hagen Air Niugini office to collect their OHE-sponsored tickets as arranged by Office of Higher Education director-general Dr William Tagis.
But they were told that the tickets had not arrived at the airline office.
Tagis said last Friday he had authorised payments for the tickets to be made to Air Niugini after the Finance Department released the funds last week.
He advised students on TESAS scholarship to collect their tickets from the nearest Air Niugini office starting this week to travel to their respective institutions.
Lapai Ambui, a final year politics student, said the OHE had not provided the tickets on time to allow students to be  in school for the registration period.
Other students turned up yesterday to pick up their tickets but were told by Air Niugini staff that they were not ready.
When the students asked Air Niugini staff to contact the OHE and find out the reason for the delay, they were told to contact the OHE themselves.
Ambui said: “We cannot pay another K500 when we are on TESAS because we need this money to pay our fees. We  have been working hard to meet the set grade point average to be on TESAS. And OHE should make things easier.”
The students are urging the OHE to make the tickets available as soon as possible.
Ambui said there were students from poor backgrounds who could not pay for their own tickets.  Thus for Tagis to say that students should pay their own way and be refunded later was wrong.
“We should consider the poor parents.
“Reimbursement should not be an option for those continuing students on TESAS scholarship,” he said.
Tagis could not be reached for comment yesterday.