The education of children in this country, to a large extent, depends on partnership between the Ministry of Education, school managements/committees, parents, teachers, students and organisations that have vested interest in education.
As such, communications and reminders need to be on-going to ensure the smooth flow of operations in a school.
Following the publication of a number of schools in last Saturday’s Fiji Sun, which have NLTB lease arrears, the Education Minister, Mr Filipe Bole, has today requested Divisional Education Officers, to remind school trustees to visit their nearest NLTB Office to make arrangements to settle their arrears.
The Ministry’s main concern here is children’s education and committees’ blatant disregard of such public notices will definitely affect the students, should the NLTB decide to take more drastic measures, as indicated in their notice.
“Our understanding is that MoE only pays for the renewal of leases upon expiry, aside from the grants disbursed on a termly basis, which should be enough to cater for schools’ operation costs where lease payments could be budgeted for,” said Mr Bole.
It is understood that these schools owe a sum of nearly $18,000.00 as arrears.
The Ministry hopes that trustees of these schools will take all necessary measures to ensure their arrears are settled.
Filipe Bole
Minister for Education, National Heritage, Culture and Arts, Youth and Sports, Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment.