Teachers facing payroll cut

THE Teaching Service Commission is urging all provincial education divisions to submit all teachers’ resumption forms by the end of this month.
“At the moment all teachers are on pay until the end of March; teachers whose resumptions forms we have not received will go on auto-suspenion (from the payroll),” TSC chairman Baran Sori told The National.
He said positions that have not been filled in as per records submitted by education divisions in provinces would become dormant until the following academic year.
Sori said as of last Monday, the resumption forms of 12,000 teachers out of the 56,000 were received by the payroll division of the Education Department. He said management of teachers’ appointments and emoluments were important and the commission had highlighted that to provincial education advisers at the start of the school year so that they were managed well to avoid an excessive blow-out in emoluments.
“Appointments are important and we told them (PEAs) come end of March all the (unoccupied) positions will become dormant,” he said.
“This is not to abolish them but to prevent other people who may not be teachers from taking those positions.
“It is serious, like Eastern Highlands complained that more than 130 names where ghost names and people where using these positions and where placed on the payroll.
“If we start managing positions, by end of March we make all the vacant positions become dormant and only education advisers can advise the commission to reactivate the positions.
“If we go through that process we can control and minimise ghost names on the payroll.”