The Minister of Education, Minkailu Bah yesterday disclosed that there is a high level of corruption in schools which he has unearthed.
He disclosed that when he asked for the number of children enrolled in schools, the figure he was presented with was more than the population of children in the country.
The Minister said, “I was shocked by this and so I decided to investigate.”
Mr Bah reported that he started in the Western Area and went down to a Primary school at Kissy which had reported that they have 700 pupils “after my investigation they had as little as 200 pupils.”
He also stated that Salamatu Turay a Member of Parliament requested that he should consider setting up a Junior Secondary school in Malama as there are 1,500 pupils and 17 teachers in the primary school.
The minister said that with the disturbing revelations he asked the MP to investigate the school figure properly. “She came back after a week and told me that the 1500 figure she was given by the school was fictitious but that the actual number was 400 pupils and 13 teachers, said the Minister.
He pointed out that the schools are inflating these figures because of school subsidies.
“Compounding this problem is the issue of ghost teachers” Minkailu stated, adding that his Ministry was given a figure of 31,120 teacher’s country wide while the Ministry of finance is processing a voucher of 33,165 teachers countrywide. There are 2,045 ghost teachers according to that data. The Minister said that they are spending time to uncover all the anomalies and promised that they will do everything to curtail corruption.