Teachers’ union condemns non-payment of 8,855 teachers

By SHIRLYN BELDEN
THE Papua New Guinea Teachers Association is calling on the Education Department to leave teachers be on payroll as their failure to submit resumption of duty forms is an administrative matter.
General-secretary Ugwalubu Mowana made the comment yesterday in response to Education secretary Dr Musawe Sinebare’s decision to put teachers who had not submitted their resumption duty forms off the payroll from this week.  
Mowana said the department was “unnecessarily penalising the teachers” and that the action was “morally wrong and only demonstrates the lack of administrative attention on teachers records by the department and Teachers Service Commission (TSC)”.   
He said 8,855 teachers reported to be penalised were committed people and their failure to submit forms on time was not of their doing. 
“They should not be blamed and penalised. This is an administrative failure by the provincial education divisions to provide transport, submit resumption forms to Waigani on time and the new teacher graduates whose resumption and registration forms have not been processed on time,” he said.
He said most of the names on the list were “ghost” names of retired, resigned and dead teachers who had been on the payroll for over 10 years. The department and the TSC had done nothing about it.     
“The announcement by Sinebare last week only demonstrates administrative deficiencies and was unfair on those teachers,” Mowana said.
He said the resumption issue was only a part of an administrative chaos that they had to address.
He said teachers’ housing and transportation, appointment, teacher-student ratio and teachers’ records were outstanding issues but teachers were penalised every year for not submitting forms.
“Most teachers’ issues are not addressed and I feel sorry for my teachers and the new graduates. If they get them off payroll, it will be hard to get them back on and that will pose another problem. I strongly call on the TSC acting Chairman and Secretary for Education to withdraw the action; let teachers do their duties and get to the ground and you will see that it was an administrative failure of staff not doing their part,” Mowana said.          
He challenged both offices to update and get the teachers’ records on track as that was one of the reasons behind late submissionof duty resumption forms.
He said K1m was spent in 2010 and 2011 on personnel master records for teachers, however to date it is in total chaos.