Teachers deserve better than this

Letters

AS we approach the final week of the 2021 academic year, we also have hundreds of dedicated and committed teachers who will end the year without receiving their salaries this year or in recent years.
The list of salary and leave fare issues teachers around the country face year in and year out is endless.
The PNG Teaching Service Commission (TSC) knows that teachers are the backbone of any country, the pillar upon which all aspirations are converted into realities.
Like sculptors, they mould and guide young minds to spread their wings and reach for the stars.
In the midst of all the new methods of teaching, technology and learning styles, teachers play an indispensable role as they ignite and impact young minds by facilitating and giving them the freedom to think, ask questions and explore to supply the human resource needed to develop this country.
They are often overworked, undervalued and given little recognition by current and past governments.
The TSC has never found any solutions to the demise of the teachers’ salary saga over the years and it cannot continue to undermine and neglect the very important issue that underpins teachers’ welfare and well-being and, most importantly, the quality of education delivered in the classroom.
This only concludes that the TSC is incompetent and does not have any standalone policies or plans that could have mitigated such situations over the years.
The reality now is that hundreds of serving and recently graduated teachers are yet to be put on the Education Department’s payroll, pending the graduate teacher quality checks or vetting process.
But is a matter of asking questions like do we have full-time officers engaged to do this job that would only take a few weeks or months to complete and segregate those compliant from the non-compliant?
For an organisation to take years to complete teacher quality checks and allow some genuine teachers to
go without food on the table every payday, and, at times, struggle
to live without the basic necessities, is a total breach in the duties and responsibilities of the employer.
We can’t continue to read headlines in our dailies and on social media about teachers – serving or graduate – not on the payroll.
If this was in the private sector, the TSC should have been made redundant and officers terminated for non-performance.
And, most importantly, for compromising the welfare/well-being of its employees and their families which affects the quality of education and production of human resource.
Effective teachers are highly committed and care about their students and, therefore, need supportive working conditions to maintain these positive attitudes because a teacher’s working condition affects their ability to provide quality education.
The Government knows that a country’s nation-building lies in the hands of its teachers.
Teachers give up a lot of time for our children, sometimes students are getting more time with their teachers than with their families.
Thus, in these difficult and unpromising working conditions, do we have a heart for teachers who, after 25 years or more, still give 100 per cent to the work that they do?
Teachers stay late after school for meetings and programme preparation, and they take their work home with them be it marking papers and/or preparing lessons.
At school or on holiday, teachers are always working.
Classroom teachers are the great promoters of the current Government’s “No child left behind” policy and they need the Government’s support.
Neglected by past governments, teachers are powerless in bureaucratic power-plays but still serve tirelessly and whole-heartedly for the sake of PNG’s human resource development.
If our dedicated teachers are going to be submitted to this kind of neglect and abuse in the years to come, I call on the Government to immediately decommission the TSC for failing our teachers for the last 40 years.

Ken Nandawa
Education Advisor – People’s
Republic of Rou’arek