Over 8500 teachers were put off payroll this week

Another teaching year, but the issue of teachers being put off pay-roll resurface again.

This pay week over eight-thousand-five-hundred teachers nationwide had not receive their fortnight salary.

The Department of Education has a resumption form all teachers teaching in public schools should fill upon arrival at their posting, before start of the academic year.  

Education Minister Lucas Dawa Dekena confirmed that 8,518 teachers were put off the payroll as a result of the auto-suspension exercise, accounting to 13 percent of the total number of teachers in the country.

And a frustrated Education Minister had thrown the blame to the “incompetency of Provincial Education Authorities”.

All Provincial Education Authority report directly to the Governors and the Provincial Administrators under the Organic Law 1995 and are not answerable and cannot be disciplined by the Secretary for Education.

Mr Dekena called on Provincial Governors and their Administrators to discipline Provincial Education Advisors who failed to ensure that teachers’ Resumption of Duty Summary Sheets [RoDSS] were entered into the Alesco Pay System in their provinces.

Almost all provinces’ salary functions have been decentralized, except for Southern Highlands and Gulf.

“The initial date for auto suspension was on Pay 5 however, given more than 50 percent of teachers were to be affected, the Secretary for Education extended the exercise to come on Pay 10 [and] all provinces were advised to ensure that their teachers submitted their RoDSS to be entered at the provincial level and for those who did not have access to Alesco [payroll] to send them to Port Moresby as soon as they could,” Mr Dekena said.

But with over 8, 500 teachers now off the payroll, the education minister had issued a ministerial directive to the Department of Education defer the auto suspension till Pay 12, which will be at the end of June.