By Gladys Nanyombi
Education service commission, a government agency mandated with the recruitment of teachers in public education schools and institutions informed Parliament’s committee on education that, over Shs 7.3 billion is spent on payment of salaries to unscrupulous teachers on the government payroll.
According to Dr. Asuman Lukwago, the Permanent Secretary of the Education Service Commission, the government payroll has hundreds of people who are receiving salaries as teachers and educators but are actually teachers with forged appointment letters.
The exact source of the forgeries is unknown, but, the Education Service Commission suspects that it could be the work of a network of gangsters.
In 2019 when the commission last conducted a validation exercise in some districts of Lango and Acholi sub-regions, Lukwago told the MPs, hundreds of cases were identified.
“When we did the last validation exercise, we discovered that government is losing up to Shs 7.3 billion to those ghost teachers. This money is illegally paid because we don’t have a lot of control over these teachers,” Lukwago said.
While the teachers presented appointment letters, minutes appointing them were non-existent and their particulars are not in the commission’s data base.
The commission’s Chairperson, Prof.Dr.Rev.Samuel Lugoba said that as it stands, they do not know the extent of the problem and the validation will help.
He said that the commission is planning to do a countrywide validation exercise between July and September but during school holidays.
Johnson Malinga, a member of the commission said that they are investigating five cases of forged appointment letters in Soroti.
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