Support for financial education for workers

I AM excited about PNG Trade Union Congress general-secretary John Paska’s proposal for financial education for workers.
My sister is a widow and grandmother.
For many years, her daughter would regularly ask her for rice to feed her children.
You are wrong if you think the girl’s husband wasn’t working.
He was and is.
Their problem was financial mismanagement.
On paydays, the son-in-law would go on wild beer drinking and pokies playing sprees.
Within a few days, he would have no money.
The loans that he got from money lenders at outrageous interest rates would be spent the same way.
Whenever my sister’s daughter asked her husband why he was broke, even on paydays, he would claim that he was robbed soon after withdrawing money from the ATM.
It took her a while to realise that the fortnightly ‘robbers’ were beer and pokies machines.
My sister stepped in many times with financial help to save her daughter and grandchildren from physical and emotional abuse.
Eventually, my sister got fed up that at one time she confronted her son-in-law.
After many such quarrels, he began to listen to her about the need to budget and live within his financial means.
The son-in-law is now a changed man.
The fortnightly fights with my sister’s daughter stopped.
He can now afford to buy toys for his kids.
They are now saving up to have money to deposit for a house.
We are happy, and they are happy too.
John Paska: There are many families going through the kind of nightmare my sister’s daughter went through.
Financial education for workers will not only improve their wellbeing.
It will also reduce the incidence of domestic violence.
I encourage women who are silently suffering because of their husbands’ mismanage their money to support John Paska.
He is an advocate for domestic peace and harmony.

Grace
Boroko
NCD