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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.

According to investigations conducted in Nicaragua, among the 3 500 teachers from autonomous colleges who actually collect a salary on a monthly basis, in reality only 1 945 of them are actually teaching. At least 555 individual salaries are therefore paid to fictitious teachers or to individuals falsely (fraudulently) using the names of teachers.

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.

Although the post-conflict period ended officially in 2006, the Ministry of Education is still not able to effectively monitor teaching and learning processes nationwide. The system records teachers who do not physically exist, teachers that do not teach (´ghost teachers`), and teachers receiving salaries from several schools. In mid-2006, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) placed two experts in the Planning Directorate of the Education Ministry in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, to set up an Education Management Information System (EMIS). This article summarizes the results of their investigations.

The Education Minister of Sierra Leone ordered a countrywide verification exercise. Many schools, and teachers, actually registered simply do not exist. According to him : "If you take into consideration the subsidies we pay for these non-existent schools, non-existent teachers and inflated roster of pupils, then it is easy to surmise that the government loses tens of thousands of dollars, every month." He accuses officials in his own department of collusion with their counterparts in the Finance Ministry.