About 4000 ghost names have been removed from the government payroll system. These names, had been captured as teachers in the government schools nationwide.
The Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper, revealed this when he touted government’s achievement in drastically reducing ghost names on Ghana’s payroll system on the Citi Breakfast Show on Friday.
He attributed the success to a number of measures put in place by the government, including electronic verification of public sector workers. Mr. Terkper, who made this known on the Citi Breakfast Show, said they have so far been able to identify about 4,000 fake teachers in the educational sector.
“Today we are not talking about ghost names. I would hope that we would do a story on ghost names as to why we are not hearing that phenomenon, as to why we are able to identify 4,000 fake teachers at a time. This is because we’ve put concrete measures in place including electronic verification,” he added.
400 fake teachers picked up it will be recalled that the Ghana Education Service in 2015 began a verification process across the country to flush out all teachers using fake certificates. About 400 fake teachers were subsequently picked up by the Bureau of National Investigations for questioning.
‘Fake teachers’ will be punished The Minister of Employment, Haruna Iddrisu earlier this year hinted that government will penalize teachers found to be operating with fake documents.
“We have some revelation of irregularities and fraud bothering on certificates backdating of some of the details. Backdating in particular of date of appointment and year of appointment and all that, has a consequence in computing the compensation of a particular employee. Those determined to have forged certificates and committed other irregularities will face the full rigorous of the law apart from the fact that they will be denied their compensation and their claims,” he added in an interview with Citi News.
In February, this year, the Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Jacob Kor, revealed that more than 400 teachers, have been identified to be teaching with fake certificates, and that the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) was to take up the matter.
In 2015, the GES began a verification process across the country to flush out all teachers using fake certificates. At a press briefing in Accra, Mr. Kor, said the number was likely to increase as more than 200 teachers, were identified in one district.
”Ghana Education Service mounted a crusade to weed out the fake certificates and as we speak we have gotten some fake certificates totaling over 400. In one district, we even have over 200 before the other distributions and they are still even coming in..”
Mr. Kor attributed the surge in the number of teachers using fake certificates in the country to the poor recruitment processes the teachers are taken through.
“It is during the recruitment of the pupil teachers when due diligence is not done that people enter with fake certificates and even with the current technology that is existing, people are able to produce certificates that if you look at it at the face value without time to go into the details, you will never realize that it is a fake certificate.” Mr. Kor revealed that teachers found culpable will be sanctioned.
“Those people are not left alone to go scot free. We have handed them over to the BNI as we speak now and we have been able to trace the source where the certificates and fake promotion letters and documents are originating from. We have picked up all those people. The law will take its on course,” he said.
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