IALIBU SECONDARY SCHOOL GRADUATES THANK PRIME MINISTER O’NEILL

Prime Minister O'neill greeting students and staff

Graduating students from Ialibu Secondary School in Southern Highlands Province thanked Prime Minister Peter O’Neill for implementing his Government’s ‘free education’ initiative throughout Papua New Guinea. Speaking during the school’s 14th graduation ceremony in Ialibu, the Students Representative Council President, Augustine Rawae, said thanks to the ‘free education policy’ there are a large number of students graduating. “On behalf of my fellow students and our parents, I express our heartfelt gratitude and salute you for realising this basic need. Our parents have for too long struggled to make ends meet just so that we can be educated,” Mr Rawae said.

He spoke of how parents had to make numerous gardens each year to sell their harvests and to raise pigs for sale at the market to pay school fees. “Now they have been relieved off this burden and their lives have been made easier. “If previous Governments had the heart for their people, they would have implemented this policy many years ago and saved our parents the hardship. Unfortunately, they sat back and watched us suffer till the O’Neill-led Government came along and saved us,” Rawae said.

He said this policy has since been an answer to every parent’s prayer.“Your appointment as Prime Minister was certainly, without doubt, divine intervention,” he added. After his speech, Mr Rawae presented a huge pig to the Prime Minister as a sign of gratitude for his Government’s assistance.