Tertiary students welcome promise to continue scholarship

Lae News, Normal
Source:

The National, Thursday 23rd August, 2012

THE Morobe Tertiary Students Union has welcomed a guarantee by Governor Kelly Naru to continue the provincial government-funded Gerson-Solulu scholarships.
Union president Offo Olio thanked Naru, who said in a press conference in Lae two weeks ago, the programme initiated by his predecessor, Luther Wenge, in 2003 would continue.
Naru said his government and administration would only review the scholarship programme to address and change clauses in its guidelines and policies, if necessary.
“We, the Morobe student leaders, are happy to work with our new governor and we welcome his call to review the programme’s guidelines and policies that we have encountered issues with,” Olio said.
“We should now readjust and come up with constructive and conducive guidelines to help the students benefit.”
The union’s proposals to Naru and provincial administrator Kemas Tomala on the review are to:
l    Combine the powers and roles of the scholarship office with auditors offices to allow smooth application processing;
l    Appoint independent auditors to investigate and reclaim the unused balance of scholarship funds remaining in the accounts of institutions’
l    Expand the scholarship to cover former graduates to continue their post-graduate studies, and,
l    Help in negotiating and locking in international scholarships to benefit the cream of the degree students to further their studies overseas.
Olio said instead of just processing the funding the audit office was involved in screening applications.
 and that had hampered processing.
He said Morobe was behind Enga in the scholarship programme there initiated by Enga Governor, Peter Ipatas.