By Eva Kuamin
Teachers in Morobe Province have once again been hit with the “leave fare entitlements” syndrome.
A group of frustrated teachers fronted up at the Post-Courier office in Lae yesterday to share their grievances over the matter.
The teachers said despite the fact that they were all entitled to being paid their leave fares, only a small fraction of them in the province had been paid.
They said in Morobe, only teachers from Gulf, Central, Western and West Sepik had already been issues their airline tickets to travel to their home provinces for holidays. Some were told to wait while others like those in the New Guinea Islands provinces were advised that they would be travelling by ship.
The teachers complained that it was unfair for only some provinces to be traveling by air while the rest travelled by ship or road.
“For those of us in the highlands provinces, it is alright to travel by road but for those in the NGI and other provinces like Milne Bay and Oro, we have to travel by air,” they said.
They said there were so many irregularities in the arrangement of their leave fares this year which had also caused a lot of inconveniences for the teachers.
They questioned why the Morobe Education Division was not addressing their plight while teachers in other provinces were being flown to their home provinces for holidays. This problem has been happening on an ad-hoc basis and has affected a lot of teachers who live in Morobe, they said.
They appealed for the department in the province to clarify why their leave fares had hit yet another snag again.
They mentioned that in the past, when they had been paid lump-sum entitlements at the end of the year, it was easy for them to purchase their families travel back to their home provinces.
After it was ceased, problems such as leave fare entitlements have now become a huge burden for them.
One of the teachers who did not wish to be named said she was not even on the leave fare entitlement list for teachers in the province.
She added that despite filling in her application for leave fare entitlements in June this year, when the list of teacher’s names came out at the provincial education office, her name was not on the list.
She said what the education division in the province should do was to have all leave fare arrangements prepared by November.
This is so that when the academic year ends in early December, teachers are able to prepare for travel to their home provinces for their holiday.
The teachers said there were some cases where only one or two family members had received their air, road or boat fare while the rest of the family members missed out.
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