Search Page

The Ministry of Education has suspended the recruitment and transfer of new staff in all government schools until a national public service payroll audit is completed. Teachers will have to be physically verified by the office of the Auditor General and those absent will not be counted. The Education Service Commission said that in October 2022 the government payroll had over 1, 000 ghost teachers.

A new report by the Education Service Commission (ESC) has revealed that since 2003, 1,000 ghost teachers have been on the government payroll. Over 600 ‘ghost teachers’ from various secondary schools and tertiary institutions accessed the payroll with fake appointment letters signed by officials, while 400 teachers lacked practising licences. The report says that in few schools, appointed teachers were not teaching but sub-contracted private teachers to perform their duties.

To prevent the forging of information, a new digital platform will allow learners from primary to university levels to have an identification number. Schools will update data about their learners, teaching and non-teaching staff, infrastructure and facilities including physical education and sports through their online EMIS user accounts. The new system is aimed to eliminate ghost workers and improve transparency and accountability across the country.

In 2019, the Ministry of Education and Sports ordered the online registration of all teachers in Kwania to streamline their services and help clear ghost workers. According to the Ministry of Education records from January, over 15,000 teachers turned up for the validation exercise with fake documents, whereas 52,900 teachers were registered under the Teacher Management Information System and received certificates.

Over 300 ghost teachers have been registered in universal primary education schools in the Mukono district. According to the Chairman of the district education committee, five schools in the remote areas were headed by one person. The high number of fake teachers has led to poor performance in schools because of very few teachers compared to the number on the payroll.

According to the Ministry of Education and Sport, at least 952 teachers are "ghosts" or irregularly kept on the payroll. Investigations reveal that some head teachers have allowed some teachers to remain on the payroll irregularly. Given an average salary of sh250,000 per month per teacher, government has been paying sh238m monthly to ghost teachers.