Minister for Education, Lucas Dawa Dekena, has announced that a total of K 212,497,575.00 million is now currently with the Bank of Papua New Guinea to clear and transfer to the commercial banks which will then be disbursed to school’s accounts soon for the second government tuition fee subsidy. Dekena expressed that on behalf of the schools under the National Education System, he thanked the National Government for its full commitment and support to the Ministry of Education by making the available the funds required to pay the schools in the second quarter. The payments will be made to each sector as follows: 1. All sectors (Elem/Prim/Sec/Voc/NSoE) – K134, 997, 575.00 2. FODE/SERC – K3, 000, 000.00 3. Project Fee – K40, 000, 000.00 4. Permitted Schools (One-off) – K2, 500, 000.00 5. Teaching and Learning – K32, 000, 000.00 In terms of payments made to schools, Dekena stated that many schools will not be getting their payments because of various issues to do with the closure of their bank accounts. “A total of 25 schools in Enga Province were put off the payments due to tribal fights and schools totally burnt down while nine schools’ accounts were closed after they were identified to have duplicate accounts.” Meanwhile, a total of 102 schools that had problems with their bank accounts will be paid during this quarter after these issues are sorted and fixed. In addition, the schools that submitted their data late will also be captured in this payment. A list of these schools will be made available to the provinces after the payment process is completed. “I call on the school administrations to spend the money on tangible resources including infrastructure development and support teaching and learning in their schools.” “School administrations must also provide quarterly reports to the Department, through the Provincial Education Offices in order to receive tuition fee grants.”