Vanuatu Teachers Union

The Commission employs about two thousand teachers in Vanuatu and Dick Hopkins warns all teachers throughout Vanuatu not to take part in any strike and anyone disobeying the order "will be disciplined".

Mr Hopkins is calling for a meeting between the dismissed Vanuatu Teachers Union president, its Secretary General and the Union's national executive committee to "sort out their differences".

The Union's national executive council has also given notice of a month-long national strike for dismissing the pair.

The council has encouraged both men to challenge their terminations in court.

It claims the men are linked to alleged misappropriation of members' funds - which they have denied.

However the Daily Post newspaper is reporting both union leaders are appealing to the more than 16-hundred teachers NOT to go on strike - saying the union's executive doesn't have the power to fire them.

The boat was provided following a request from 43 teachers based in the province.

The teachers will now be able to move around with ease and access banking facilities, hospital and other services in the islands.  

The seven-metre boat was purchased at Vt676,000, has a passenger capacity of twelve people. It can also carry light cargo.

The boat was delivered to the TORBA Bulwea executive last weekend.

Willie Abiut said a proposal calling for $US3.45 million to settle the anomalies and $US5.2 million to settle the benefits had been lodged with the Development Committee of Officials and the Council of Ministers.

The union is waiting for parliament to sit in June to approve the payments and is confident MPs will accede to the proposal, Mr Abiut said.

"That's the question of waiting for their approval but the government is responding. They're giving us quite a few figures of settling the issues so they're answering what the VTU is asking," he said.

The Daily Post reports Willie Abiut is alleged to have sold union-owned land and a union-owned vehicle for personal gain.

But Mr Abiut told the newspaper that he was wrongly suspended, promising to respond to the allegations when they are provided to him by the union's executive.

Mr Abiut was elected to the union's presidency in 2016.

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Arsene Siriam's statement comes after the announcement that Vanuatu's education sector has been allocated US$7.3 million to rebuild infrastructure damaged in Cyclone Pam.

The education ministry says that after waiting almost five months, it will now rebuild 70 percent of school buildings damaged by the category five cyclone, which devastated much of the country in March.