East Sepik has become the sixth province to sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with the Department of Education to manage the Government Tuition Fee Subsidy Policy.
The MoA is a government decision directing the Department of Education to decentralise the management of GTFS which comprises of the Cash, Infrastructure and the Teaching & Learning components. Under that decision, five (5) provinces have already signed the MoA and are managing their components starting in 2019.
The recent signing officially begins the process of decentralisation to East Sepik Province. Other provinces are Enga, New Ireland, Morobe, East New Britain and Milne Bay.
All responsibilities on the implementation of the policy, monitoring of and ensuring compliance to standards and guidelines as specified in the GTFS Policy and its implementation guide rests with the provincial administration.
When the Marape-Steven Government came into office on the 30th of May 2019, it reconsidered the last Government’s TFF Policy, reviewed it, and made the education of children a shared responsibility between the government, parents, churches, NGOs and local communities.
A shift from free education to shared responsibility was to compel parents and communities to plough the soil and work hard.
“In order to take back PNG, we must do away with creating a ‘handout culture’ of the previous government when over the last six years, our people were made lazy, disconnected parents from schools and systematically removed their interest in schools,” said the Education Minister, Joseph Yopyyopy.
“We want to disengage and cut out the dependency syndrome that was systematically allowed into our PNG culture over the last six years.
“I thank the East Sepik Provincial Government for taking on the challenge to manage the GTFS Policy by signing the MoA today.”
(From left: ESP provincial administrator, Dr Clement Malau, singing the MoA with Education Secretary, Dr Uke Kombra)