By EVAH KUAMIN

STUDENTS from the University of Technology in Lae will boycott classes tomorrow following absolute majority support gained by the Students Representative Council (SRC) for the Judicial Conduct Act to be repealed.

The SRC on Monday this week announced that it had given its full backing to their sister universities around the country to condemn the newly passed Act.

Unitech SRC President Joe Kaowai said students at the university have expressed their full support to their collegues at Univeristy of Papua New Guinea.

Mr Kaowai added that the SRC feels that the passing of the Act is going to detrimentally affect the future of students and all citizens of the country in the future.

He called on the Government to revisit its decision on the passing of the law.  He said the student body has questioned why it took only three readings and a day before the Bill was passed, which was in itself historic.  Mr Kaowai said the bill was trying to remove some of the powers of the judges cleary implicated that the Government wanted to control the judiciary system.

Their actions alone in passing the Bill will affect the whole nation – maybe not at the present time but sometime in the future, he said.

He mentioned that the negative response published in the two newspapers yesterday has not gone down well with students in the country’s prime tertiary insitutions.

The president also questioned why there were not any awareness and public consultation done or discussions before the Bill was passed.

Mr Kaowai said as a student body, they had a neutral stand as like their sister-institutions in the country.

He reiterated that if the Government persisted with gazetting the Bill, students from all institutions in the county will rise in action, which will see a mass boycott of classes in all the universities.

The action he said is likely to happen sooner because of the already received negative response from Prime Minister Peter O’Neil.

A concerned citizen, who phoned in to the Post-Courier to express his views, questioned why business houses and university students were against it.

The caller who wanted to remain anonymous said why all these institutions did not make any noise when a Supreme Court judge took out a permanent restraining court order against the police.

This he said was one of the serious issues which the elites of this country had overlooked.