By Sharlyne Eri – EMTV News, Port Moresby
Teachers are paying the cost for a very serious electronic fault in the payroll system, according to the PNG Teacher’s Association (PNGTA).
A total of 493 teachers throughout the country have been confirmed to have had deductions to their salary over the last three fortnights.
According to the Education Department and the Teaching Service Commission (TSC), these deductions were made against teachers’ loans.
PNGTA on the other hand, refuted this with the belief that the payroll system was hacked by other parties to get the loans using teachers’ names.
The Education Department and the TSC yesterday, issued a list with names of the 493 teachers with the amount of loans against them.
PNGTA says the list is very suspicious as it indicated that a teacher in a remote location was getting loans from many different loan companies for a number of reasons.
PNGTA’s General Secretary said another issue at hand was the fact that the Education Department, TSC and the Government line departments were assuming that the deductions was a result of salary adjustments as a result of the implementation of the 2017 to 2019 teaching service salary agreement.
Through an NEC decision, line departments through Education Department established a schedule for paying outstanding to teachers’ salaries for pay 13 pay 18.
Mr Mowana said this agreement was breached as it has been revealed that adjustments for pay 18 were never paid to teachers. However, there have being massive random deduction ranging from K10 – K400.
Since pay 18 of 2018, teachers have been experiencing unexplained deductions from their salary.
PNGTA is now demanding that:
• For all salary deductions from teachers be refunded by pay 21
• The salary fixation agreement be implemented in full by pay 21
• Audit of teaching positions against teacher numbers must be done to avoid salary bill blow out in budget
• All teachers who have been put out of pay roll be put back on; new graduates be put on payroll
• Investigate possible fraudulent activity in payroll
• Pay roll system be managed by a competent payroll
Mr Mowana said the association can only advocate for teachers but the onus was on them to take action against the issue.
