In order to capture teachers’ daily attendance, the State Government introduced fingerprint devices in 219 secondary schools under the Ministry. The new system will not only help reduce teacher absenteeism in primary and secondary schools but also eliminate ghost workers. The State Commissioner for Education reported that 53.5 per cent of teachers do not show up for work at all.

Education Department officials in northern Balkh province announced that ghost teachers and other employees appointed based on fraud and forgery would no longer receive pay and other privileges. 14 925 teachers and workers have been covered since the introduction of the biometric system, and from now on salaries will be paid upon completing legal procedures.

Sindh Anti-Corruption Establishment has found corruption and misuse of authority in Sindh Education Department district Jacobabad involving illegal inducting of hundreds of fake teachers, getting illegal financial benefits in the name of fake employees’ retirement, pension and death claims from department and life insurance company. The investigation continues after the fraud of millions of rupees has been reported, as well as the illegal role and abuse of authority from officers of the Education and Finance Departments.

The number of students disciplined for academic misconduct at the University of Auckland rose to 195 last year, from 187 the year before. Cheating incidents reported have highlighted concerns about the reuse of assignments and the fact that ghostwriters undermine school integrity. According to the Tertiary Education Union president, university bosses should support teaching staff to implement the best anti-cheating measures such as changing assignments frequently and requiring students to submit their work through detection service Turnitin.

In order to strengthen the integrity of the examination results, the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board arrested no fewer than 100 candidates nationwide for various examination malpractices. Among the people arrested was a candidate who registered 64 times to ‘ghost write’ exam for 64 candidates since the exam runs for seven days with an average of three shifts per day per centre.

Tanzania’s flagship University of Dar es Salaam is under investigation by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee for the mismanagement of university funds. An audit report for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 fiscal years presented to the parliamentary committee earlier this month shows that approximately US$0.5 million was lost on unretired imprest from workers and US$0.2 million on salaries to ghost workers at the university. The committee chairperson suggested that poor financial management at the university was behind the losses.

The report focuses on the discovery of thousands of ghost teachers and pupils in Columbia, which came to light during the annual audit by the Ministry of Education. This state audit was carried out in 36,000 education secretariats across the country. 

Three more cases of unlawful appointments in the Rawalpindi education department have been unearthed. According to sources in the education department, three fake women teachers have been hired for a high school for boys. The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) is already investigating the appointment of 50 fake teachers in the education department in Kallar Syedan. The Executive District Officer has launched an inquiry into the bogus appointments, an official in the education department on condition of anonymity said.

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.