A little over 600 ghost teachers have been on the Ugandan payroll for many years, an investigation by the Auditor General found out, and Parliament is further probing the matter with the view of punishing those responsible for making government and tax payers lose nearly Shs20bn in these illegal payments.
Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (Local Government) has begun investigating how 609 ghost teachers got onto the payroll, secured appointment letters and earned salaries for varied periods – ranging from one year to 39 years.
The ghost appointments were discovered by the Auditor General in 2022. A total of 129 districts were found to have ghost teachers – teachers who exist in name but do not go to class anywhere.
In Nakasongola District, six individuals were found to have forged minutes purportedly from Education Service Commission and appointed themselves education officers or teachers.
These pocketed Shs52,361,851 in the 2021-2022 Financial Year alone. The loss to government is huge since these ghosts were on the payroll for the periods between two and 22 years.
In the district of Agago, Shs253,421,413 was paid to 52 ghost secondary school employees. These 52 ghosts were not anywhere in the Education Service Commission database. Yet they have been earning money for an average of five years.
In Arua District, government paid Shs48,303,762 to three ghost secondary school employees.
These were paid under the names of Emmanuel Alioni, Anceto Olima and Faustine Ojonduga. Alioni earned Shs16,796,716, Olima pocketed Shs18,094,438 while Ojonduga earned Shs13,412,608.
Iganga District was not any different. Here, two individuals forged minutes and made it appear that these (minutes) were from the Education Service Commission. These had been on the payroll for an average of 17.5 years. Government and tax payers were paying them Shs11,014,648.
It should be remembered that Museveni’s government was a few months ago carrying out a head count exercise for all civil servants, and had threatened not to give salaries to any government employee who missed the exercise. (Read Story Here)
Meanwhile, on the education service payroll, there are thousands of ghost teachers, with Museveni’s sister who works at the Education Service Commission revealing that there were over 1,000 ghost teachers on the payroll. (See Details There).
The making of ghost teachers is said to be a syndicate of some sorts, involving officials at service commissions. Last year, Education Service Commission bosses were accused of selling each teacher job for Shs2m. (See Details Here).
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