Thursday 16 May 2024
Minister for Education Hon. Lucas Dawa Dekena has issued directions to respective heads within the education department and provinces to immediately resolve teachers’ issues.
Teachers issues include auto suspensions of teachers, as alluded to recently by the West New Britain Provincial Member, Hon. Sasindra Muthuvel, due to incompetency in the province.
Mr Dekena said he has been advised of the teacher Resumption of Duty Summary Sheets (RODSS) not being actioned early as expected, resulting in more than 1,000 teachers being on auto suspension.
The recent update show work being carried out, with a decrease in the figure to 785, which is 29 percent of the total number of teachers teaching in WNB.
The provincial government IT officers have been working tirelessly since yesterday (Wednesday 15 May), to ensure teachers RODSS are uploaded in the system, and is expected to be completed this week.
Mr Dekena said the issue is not only faced in West New Britain Province; but the other 22 provinces as well.
WNB has the highest number of percentage on teachers auto suspension followed by East Sepik province by 22 per cent.
Auto-suspension is a feature configured into the payroll to ensure teachers are actually at their assigned posts teaching children.
“This is also an excellent feature that assists in removing ghost names from the education payroll.
“The details that populate the system are collected in the schools and verified by the provincial Education authorities then uploaded into the payroll system.”
Mr Dekena has also instructed the Education Secretary to restore the affected teachers back on the payroll and give the provinces one month to fix the teachers’ resumption information.