I have removed over 6,000 ghost teachers from the vouchers around the country”, the Minister of Education Minkailu Bah said, revealing that due to his stance in making sure that the right thing is done, the country is saving Le43.2 billion yearly.
He disclosed that the salaries of principals is close to Le3 million, other teachers are earning Le1.5million and the minimum salary of teachers is Le600,000, exposing that “in a simple calculation, if you calculate Le600,000 by 6,000 ghost teachers it is Le3.6 billion a month and if you multiply that by 12 it is 43.2 billion a year. That is a lot of money being saved.”
The Minister made this revelation on Tuesday while he was updating Parliament on the Ministries activities since 2013 to date.
Dr. Bah said he has started fighting ghost teachers since 2008 when he came into the Ministry stating that “I challenge the heads of schools, head teachers and principals that we have ghost teachers in our schools and people were saying since the Minister came he is just fighting ghost teachers and I say I will continue fighting them until I put all of them out of the system.”
Highlighting more challenges, the Minister said teachers are shouting out there for their salaries, “when we have some of them that have given wrong bank accounts to the Ministry of Finance.”
He said the Ministry of Finance has paid salaries based on the account number given to them by those teachers through the Ministry of Education stating that he has the document in his possession from the bank which reads the banks have sent the money back to the Ministry of Finance because the name and the account name is different so they cannot be paid.
Hon. Members, Dr Bah continued you cannot believe that there are conniving activities in schools where in they are opening account for teachers who had left the profession since 2008.
The Minister of Education said “Just within two months I have stopped the account of 75 teachers that were paid directly into their account and these teachers had left since 2011,” disclosing that a recent example is the case at Ansarul Secondary School that is being investigated by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and the Albert Academy Secondary School that is being investigated by Parliament.
He said there are a lot of such cases, which will be brought before the Education Committee in Parliament for investigation.
Dr. Bah concluded that since the ACC matter came to light, “150 schools are now asking me to delete names of teachers which have been added in the vouchers and who have left the school,” stating that if a teacher had left since 2011, why is it only now that heads of schools are asking me to delete names. “I will forward all of those names to parliament for investigation.”
“The state is crying for money and people are trying to take money from the state illegally. I will not be a party to that.”
By Emmanuella Kallon
Thursday November 10, 2016