Teacher crisis looms

11,000 vacancies with only 1,200 teachers available

 

By DULCIE OREKE

 

THERE is a crisis looming for the Education Department with the 2011 school year just a fortnight away, The National reports.

There are vacancies for 11,000 teachers nationwide and, with only 1,200 leaving teachers colleges to join the service, there would be a massive shortage of teaching staff, the PNG Teachers Association said yesterday.

Association general secretary Ugwalubu Mowana said that there had also been a huge flight of teachers from the service, with 1,700 teachers resigning last year.

He said rural-based schools would be the hardest hit as teachers preferred to teach in urban schools.

Mowana said the teaching services commission and the government must take responsibility for the flight of teachers and the plight of the education system.

He said most of them were leaving because of poor terms and conditions and the government’s careless attitudes towards the needs of the teachers.

He said the flight of teachers had to do with difficulties in transportation to and from schools, poor infrastructure including accommodation, high cost of living and long delays in processing payments for teachers.

Mowana said last year, 1,751 teachers resigned from the teaching service. This is 500 more than new graduating teachers.

He said the government’s universal basic education (UBE) initiative depended upon the availability of teachers and that the policy might have a still-birth unless this situation was arrested and soon.

Teachers faced tough conditions in some of the remotest parts of the country where, often, they were the only face of the government.

Often, they went without pay for up to six months at a time and when they arrived in towns to collect their pay, it would either be stolen or misplaced.

 “If government wants to see reform reach remote areas, they must improve teachers’ terms and conditions,” Mowana said.

A senior teaching services commission official agreed that there were insufficient teachers to fill current vacancies.

TSC commissioner Rose August said yesterday that most of the vacancies were located in remote parts of PNG.

According to August, about 43,000 teachers nationwide would know the status of their 2011 teaching posts soon.

She said postings were the responsibility of individual provincial education boards (PEB) which would inform its teachers at the end of last year.

 

 

Office of Higher Education clarifies fees and selections

By TROY TAULE

 

THE office of higher education has corrected misconceptions over school fees and selection for higher education, The National reports.

OHE director-general Dr William Tagis yesterday said that the office had no control over the setting of school fees or selection into tertiary institutions.

He said the measurement services unit of the Department of Education was responsible for marking all end-of-year examination papers.

“This done, the paper are then sent to the OHE for ranking,” Tagis said.

“After ranking them from highest to the lowest, the list containing the students’ names and marks are then sent to the universities and colleges to select their students based on the OHE rankings.”

The explanations by Tagis came about following media reports this week that aggrieved parents of students in Western Highlands had planned to stage a sit-in protest along the main Highlands Highway after their children, some of whom had scored above-average marks, were not selected for tertiary education.

The parents had alleged cheating and foul play in some schools.

Tagis said while he understood that the University of Papua New Guinea and some institutions had increased their fees, OHE had no control over those decisions.

He said a resource study would be conducted by OHE this year to review the school fee increases over the last five years.

He said this would provide an informative economic analysis for the government to see if the increases were fair or not and take action.

Tagis said on the questions of scholarships at UPNG, students would have to sort that out with their respective schools.

“Scholarships are only awarded from lists provided by the different schools at UPNG.

“Students with queries should go and see their respective schools and not the OHE.”

 

 

West Sepik police deny knowledge of border operation

WEST Sepik police have confirmed that they were neither informed nor instructed of the proposed deployment of a joint police and military operation along the PNG-Indonesia border in Vanimo, The National reports.

They said the Northern command also did not receive any brief on the deployment exercise, prompting speculations that the police headquarter had acted independently without due respect and consideration for its regional headquarters.

As a result, the Vanimo police station was closed yesterday morning and would remain so until all the differences and problems were resolved professionally.

“I was left in the dark and so was the Northern command,” West Sepik police commander Sakawar Kasieng said by phone from Vanimo last night.

He said the whole operation was kept very quiet until the arrival of a shipment of 14 vehicles and three boats.

“The vehicles were all tinted 10-seater Toyota landcruisers, hired from a motor dealer in Lae,” Kasieng said.

Kasieng’s comments stemmed from a stand-off between local police in Vanimo and members of the Port Moresby-based special task force currently in Vanimo for operation Sunset Merona.

The differences had also resulted in the bashing of a local police traffic officer who is nursing a broken nose and is having breathing difficulties.

The incident reportedly happened in front of the Vanimo police station, with Kasieng a witness himself.

He said the claim on national television yesterday that the victim had been driving an unregistered vehicle was “a pack of lies”.

“My policeman was on duty and driving a registered vehicle,” Kasieng said.

The PPC said he would push for his policeman to be airlifted to Port Moresby for adequate medical treatment.

“The actions of these policemen fall nothing short of mob rule.

“They are criminals and should not be involved in such operations.”

The provincial police commander said police files had been completed and prepared following investigations into the assault case.

“Police will arrest and charge the four men allegedly involved when they are brought in, hopefully tomorrow (today),” Kasieng said.

He said police and the local community were also demanding that provincial administrator Joseph Sungi turn up in public and explained the whole exercise.

“My policemen are very upset”

“They also completely left us out in the operation,” Kasieng said.

 

 

 

Mystery disease kills 10 in Northern

TEN people have died reportedly from an unknown disease in remote villages along the Owen Stanley Range in Northern, The National reports.

This has caused panic and a health concern among other villagers and nearby areas as the disease causes extreme swelling to various parts of the body then they die.

Public servants, who live in Port Moresby, were recently in these villages for the Christmas and New Year festive season and witnessed this.

Located in the Fafia local level government of Musa, 10 villagers in Upper Musa along the two main rivers had contracted the disease, causing the Middle and Lower Musa people to fear for their lives because of the risk of infection.

The symptoms include painful swellings from the legs, then it spreads to the arms and hands, the stomach and then the head before it kills the person.

Musa villagers are concerned because there was a lack of medical personnel to attend to those affected.

“The health facilities, such as the buildings are there, they are rundown. 

“They have been I that state for the past 12 or so years,” one public servant said.

He said because of this, and the lack of drugs, there were no health workers around.

Leaders in Middle and Lower Musa villages are now requesting officials from the provincial and national health authorities to investigate.

They are fearful that the disease may be water-borne as they are located downstream from the affected area, and that the water may be contaminated with bacteria.

The source said the inability to get medical assistance to these people was a case of negligence and ignorance by the provincial government.

“This also applies  to other basic services such as setting up and running a school in this area”.

 

Nautilus gets nod for seafloor mining

THE government has given the green light for what is hoped to be world’s first sea floor mining venture, The National reports.

It has granted a 20-year mining lease to Canadian company, Nautilus Minerals, to mine gold and copper deposits in a 59km2 section of the Bismarck Sea, at depths of about 1,600m.

The Solwara1 one site, as it is known, is off the coast of New Ireland and about 50km north of Rabaul, Nautilus Minerals CEO Stephen Rogers told Radio Australia yesterday.

In Toronto, Canada, Nautilus Minerals shares climbed 21% to $2.66 on Monday after the underwater miner reported that the government had granted Nautilus the lease for the development of the Solwara1 project in the Bismarck Sea.

Rogers told the Australian radio network that the site was expected to produce around 800,000 tonnes of copper and up to 200,000 ounces of gold a year.

The PNG government now had one month to decide if it would exercise its option to take a stake in the project of anything up to 30%.

Production is expected to begin in late 2013 or in 2014.

Rogers said it was an historic decision.

“As this industry emerges, it is going to present a significant contribution to the PNG economy,” he added.

He said early this month Nautilus announced more drilling results from Solwara1 which showed a combined indicated and inferred resource of about 1.3 million tonnes a year.

“Any capital that we have to put into the project, going forward … the government would have to put up its 30% share.

“Initially, it has an outlay of approximately US$20 million to US$25 million which represents the investment costs to date on the exploration, the environmental work and the development work, that has been carried out so far on the project,” he said.

Asked what sort of stake the government was considering, Rogers said: I wouldn’t like to second guess the government, but I am of the opinion that they will certainly participate.”

“As the project is offshore, you don’t have to deal with landowners. Does that mean PNG and its citizens will not get as much income from deep sea mining as it does from mining on land?

“Not at all. The same opportunities exist for people to participate in this project by providing services to the company, and in terms of the royalties going back into the country, they are exactly the same as any land-based mine.

“So while we are not impacting people and having to move them from their homes, the general benefit back into the country is very similar.”

Solomon Islands’ agriculture delegation visits Papua New Guinea

By JAMES LARAKI of NARI

A delegation from the Solomon Islands is visiting National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI) this week to enhance partnership between the Solomon Islands ministry of agriculture and livestock (MAL) and NARI.
The delegation, led by the secretary to the minister for agriculture and livestock, Dr Ravindra Joshi and director extension services, Mr Michael Ho’ota is visiting NARI to further strengthen collaboration between the two organisations.

Solomon delegation leader Dr Ravindra Joshi (left) and director extension services Michael Ho’ota listening to presentation by NARI project leaders at the NARI head office at Bubia outside Lae

In welcoming the delegation, NARI director general, Dr Raghunath Ghodake, said that NARI was looking forward to the collaboration between the two organisations under the recently-signed memorandum of understanding for the Western Pacific EU/ACP science and technology programme.
He also agreed that there was considerable scope for further interaction between the two organisations in the areas of information and knowledge-sharing, technology adaptation and piloting, as well as out-scaling and up-scaling activities.
Dr Ghodake said that as a way forward, there was a need for further dialogue involving officials and experts from both sides to interact and decide on specific areas of collaboration, processes, mechanisms, modus operandi, resources and timelines.
These could then be reflected in a bilateral understanding between NARI and MAL and taken further from there.
He said that the two organisations would also look at opportunities available to source funds from donors for collaborative projects and programmes.
The delegation will have discussion and interaction with various projects implemented by NARI including the EU/ACP S&T which MAL and the Vanuatu Agricultural Research and Technical Centre are part of.
The MAL will be looking at strengthening their partnership with NARI in assisting Solomon Islands research and development capacities in the areas of agriculture planning, aquaculture, small livestock, feed development, agriculture market information, food processing and value adding, and crop production.
Possibilities of extending NARI released technologies to the PNG farming communities to the Solomon Islands will also be looked at.
An agreement in a form of an MOU is expected to be signed between the two organisations during the week to further strengthen their partnership, which will be effected through the exchange of information, exchange of scientists, trainings, workshops and conference relating to agriculture research and development in the Solomon Islands and PNG.

Bad start to border operations

By ISAAC NICHOLAS

 

THE border security operation, Sunset Merona, got off to a bad start with a Vanimo police traffic officer hospitalised and a stand-off between Sandaun police and the Port Moresby-based police task force on border duties, The National reports.

Acting Police Commissioner Anthony Wagambie last night denied knowledge of the incident.

However, there were also unconfirmed reports that a PNG task force member was shot at and wounded by the Indonesian armed forces.

The man was admitted at the Vanimo General Hospital last night.

The border operation had also attracted the attention of Indonesian authorities after Wagambie allegedly led a contingent of uniformed PNG police task force members into Indonesian territory to shop last Saturday.

West Sepik provincial police commander Joe Kasieng had ordered the closure of the Vanimo police station after an alleged attack by task force members left a local police traffic officer with serious injuries.

The traffic officer had been hospitalised.

Sources from Vanimo said the incident had led to a stand-off between West Sepik and the Port Moresby-based task force.

The situation remained tense as Kasieng demanded the arrest of the police personnel involved in the attack.

The incident comes after Wagambie had attracted the ire of the Indonesian soldiers by crossing the border at Wutung with his men in full uniform into Batas market on the Indonesian side of the border to do shopping.

Indonesian official sources claimed that a PNG security force commander, going into Indonesian territory in full uniform, was a violation of international laws and border agreements unless it was a joint exercise between the two countries.

The Indonesian embassy, however, played down the border crossing issue as the Batas market was popular for shopping but, because of the PNG border exercise and because the police commissioner was involved, the crossing had raised eyebrows, particularly that of the Indonesian military.

Responding to questions, the embassy confirmed that last Saturday, some PNG police officers had crossed over into Batas to buy some souvenirs at the traditional Indonesian market.

An embassy spokesman said the tour was guided by a Mr Sutar (Indonesian consulate) and PNG border liaison officer Moses Poi.

The spokesman said this was allowed under current arrangements between the two countries.

Wagambie, when asked last night, said he was curious about the kind of trade going on at Batas and wanted to see for himself.

But, before crossing the border into Batas, he had asked Poi to seek permission from the Indonesian authorities to allow him a tour of the market facility.

However, the embassy spokesman stressed that the Indonesian government monitored the border constantly and would appreciate advance information on any activity, official or otherwise, which involved crossing the border.