Search Page

Ghost teachers and ghost schools are a burden on the education system in rural areas of Balochistan and the government needs to take concrete steps to repair the damage that is caused to its children and their future. Most public schools lack basic facilities like boundary walls, chairs, toilets, clean drinking water, electricity, and even teachers, not to mention the absence of study material like course-books and other infrastructural needs. Authorities continue to pay teachers despite their wilful absence and a great number of them are hired based on political affiliation rather than their qualification and educational achievements.

High-ranking government officials attended an ostentatious ceremony held by the president on Tuesday where he ordered that 954 teachers found to have been teaching at 1081 schools across the country be given permanent positions at the Ministry effective from that day. Early October 1626 positions out of 6448 were found to be ghost 'employees' by the Somaliland Civil Service Commission (SCSC ). Out of that number, 954 were found on Ministry of Education payrolls, a number that did not physically exist but whose salaries were being drawn fraudulently. Neither the government nor the SCSC charged anybody on the grand theft of public resources.

Over 2,000 primary school teachers from about 27 local government areas of Oyo State protested on what they described as monumental frauds being perpetrated by some officials of the state in connivance with some State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) officials. In Ibadan North Local Government alone, about 109 teachers claimed that the fraudulent state officials fleeced them over N54m from illegal deductions made from their salaries.

The Sindh education department has decided to recover the funds disbursed in salaries to ghost teachers using its biometric attendance system. Sindh education secretary boasted that Sindh is the only province in the country to have biometric attendance in the education department.

In a scam unearthed recently, for over 14 months, hundreds of public servants in Wakiso district in Uganda were receiving salaries many times higher than what they are entitled to under their grades. So far, 183 teachers have admitted to have benefitted from this payroll fraud amounting up to 2.3 billion Ugandan shillings.

The newly confirmed Assistant Education Minister for Fiscal Affairs and Human Resource Development, has vowed to work with his colleagues to increase the salaries and wages of educational officials across the country. He told senators that he will work with his colleagues to ensure a corruption- free educational system that is also brought up to a better standard, blaming the corruption in the system on low salaries for teachers and other officials.

The participants reflected on accountability and transparency of management and financing of the teaching system in DRC, and elaborated implementation strategies for the various stakeholders. .../... Several themes were discussed of which the integrated strategy of the fight against corruption in the education sector and the financing of education by the State at the local level, teachers' salaries, etc.