Teachers’ data not thoroughly factored in to budgets: Tapo

Caption: Education Secretary Dr Michael Tapo speaking to the committee.

Caption: Document clearly showing constant yearly figures for leave fares for teachers in provinces.

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, February 8, 2015 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

EDUCATION Secretary Dr Michael Tapo revealed that realistic calculations were not factored into the processing of leaves fares of teachers.

In his explanation that was pointed towards the Provincial Administrations and Provincial Education Advisors (PEAs), during the hearing on Friday by the Special Parliamentary Committee on Public Sector Reform and Service Delivery.

He laid blame to the lack effective data collection by those on the ground responsible for collating teacher numbers and dependent information for formulation into provincial education budgeting.

“A lot of people don’t analyze the teacher population, considering that teachers are married, single, some teaching for 15 to 20 years, some even more or less years, but that data on the teachers is so important to the provincial authorities so that if they are due for leave, it tells them how much money is needed for a teacher or one family,” Dr Tapo said.

“If there are 100, how much is needed for those families when they go on leave? The bio data on the teacher families, which is normally a part of the PNG Government’s Human Resource and Payroll System (ALESCO), determines how many are entitled to go on leave.”

“All those laws and procedures are in place, but negligence or ignorance where people are not going further to find out how much is required in entitlements.”

He said that when the real bio data is not properly in place, real costs of getting to various parts of the country are not included.

“For most of them, there is a blatant or poor budgeting process- I do not know who to blame but in the department we bring every year all the senior education officers and once a year we meet and leave fares and budgets are one of those,” he said.

“We remind our colleagues to stay on put and review their budgets.”

Adding to his points, Mr Tapo presented figures from documents from the Finance Department showing uniform figures for successive years from 2011 to 2014.

“From 2011 to 2014, we have documents from finance, and if you look at the list of funds allocated for leave fares you have just over K1 million for Western Province teachers,” he said.

“Same figures for 2012, 2013, and 2014 with all the provinces- now taking on to consideration that the size of teachers have grown and also that of their families, included that of the cost of airfares- provincial administrations to submit the budgets for leave fares this is one source of the problem.”

“You can see that the problem of ignorance and negligence are the words to use- people are not articulating the realities by people who are there on the ground to do that.”

He pointed out that Waigani (Education Department) was not responsible for processing leave fares for provincial institutions, but only for national institution teachers.

“Only the national institutions are what Waigani is responsible in the processing of leave fares for NCD teachers, teachers colleges, TVET institutions, and National High Schools- the rest in the provinces come under the provincial administrations and their budgeting requirement.”

“We have procedures in place where we publish a school calendar every year that tells our teachers on important dates like what time they are to send in their leave fares requests to provincial divisions.”

When asked by the committee if dialogue takes place between PEAs and the department during the budgetary process- the Secretary said that there was consultation to an extent in which his powers allowed, however he confessed that there was a lax in the area.

“Yes, however, I do not have powers to direct them, it used to be before when they were called superintendents of provinces and the Teachers Services Commission was part of the Department of Education.”

“But given that things spread out they had become an entity as by the parliament act.”

“When it comes to things like the teachers terms and conditions and curriculum standards then that is our functions, in terms of accountability and performance that is provincial administrator.