PNG Teachers are planning for nationwide strike over pay issues. The starting date of the strike is yet to be decided and will be made known to the public when the date is set. The strike has been endorsed by the PNG Teachers Association and will take industrial strike action against the government over the unpaid adjustments to the salary fixation agreement that was signed between teachers and the government.
And they are targeting the National Examination weeks to go on strike, posing possible chaos for thousands of grade 10, 12 and 8 students who will be sitting for exams next month. PNGTA president Ugwalubu Mowana told the media that they are taking this step at such a time because association members were frustrated and the Department of Education was solely to be blamed for not addressing teachers’ issues. Issues such as the salary fixation agreement remained their main concern where teachers had not been paid according to the new rates. Mowana says they are calling for all teachers affected to be back paid up till January 2014. “This issue has come about because some teachers have had their salaries adjusted to their correct levels of salaries but they have not been back paid.” Pay slips accessibility under the new Alesco payroll system introduced this year is another overdue issue. “For two years we haven’t been receiving pay slips and there is no manual print out now and at the moment there is no online kind of arrangement. “It’s taken them too long to fix and if they keep on having deaf ears (to teachers) we are now resorting to industrial action and we will target the national exams,” says Mowana. He says ignorance by the department and the Teaching Service Commission is leading to such actions out of frustration. “The children are going to suffer but you don’t blame the teachers, blame the Department of Education and the Teaching Service Commission. “We are going to spread the industrial action and we are going to target it to affect the exams. “I am blaming the Department of Education for all the problems,” says Mowana. PNG Facts/PNG LOOP Comments are closed.
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