100 teachers suspended in Gulf

MORE than 100 teachers from Gulf have been affected by the Education Department’s auto-suspension this year, an official says.
Gulf acting education adviser Andrew Laroa told The National that most of the 103 teachers put off the payroll were elementary school teachers in the remote areas.
Laroa said because of the difficulty in reaching these remote locations of these schools, the teacher resumption forms submitted to the Education Department which resulted in the auto-suspension.
Acting primary school coordinator Max Hulama said most teachers were the elementary teachers and were locals, but his office would assist them in whatever ways they could.
“Our responsibility is to assist primary, high and secondary schools in terms of finance and other support during their suspension,” he said.
Hulama said the 103 teachers were out of the 9,000 teachers who were put off the payroll as reported by Education secretary Dr Uke Kombra.
He said the province has around 1,900 teachers at more than a hundred schools – elementary, primary and high school, the main problems many schools faced was accessibility.
According to the Education Department report, the numbers of teachers on auto-suspension this year are similar to last year’s figures.