Teaching Service Commission Discovers 48 ‘Ghost Teachers’ on School Vouchers

The head of the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) and Deputy Director of Education in Bo revealed that the Commission has successfully traced 48 names on vouchers in various schools, but these individuals are not actual teachers associated with the said schools.

Reverend Father Sylvester Foday, the commission’s head in that region, granted an exclusive interview at their Baiima Road office in Bo City. He asserted that primary schools operated by the Sierra Leone Brotherhood Mission still maintain ghost teachers on their pay vouchers, despite measures implemented by the Ministry of Basic and Senior Education to clean the payroll.

According to the TSC boss,  the SLMB schools into the spotlight when he obtained a payment voucher sent to the head teacher of SLMB Primary School at the Bo Coronation Field a few months ago. Despite having only 7 actual teachers in the school, the records indicated that 30 other fictitious names were receiving payments as teachers purportedly attached to the school each month

“This warranted undertaking a full scale investigation into the payment systems in all SLMB schools across the district where we made more discoveries, bring us to the number of 48 teachers in the various SLMB Primary schools receiving salaries but not attached to the schools,” Reverend Father Foday noted.

With teachers no longer paid in cash, the mystery surrounding the presence of those names on the pay vouchers became puzzling. The Reverend highlighted that the chances of illegal teacher recruitments were low. Instead, the ministry conducts replacements through the TSC, indicating that the mission authorities might have kept those names on the vouchers before the banking system was introduced.

Moreover, the TSC boss expressed the challenge of tracking down ghost teachers since payments are now processed through the banking system. Many schools have shifted away from relying on vouchers, making it harder to identify discrepancies.

“Even when teachers take their payments from the banks, none ever cares to sign vouchers so this has created a new form of connivance between unscrupulous school heads and ministry officials,” he said.

According to the TSC Boss most of the problems are caused by Assurance officer also known as Inspector of Schools because they fail to properly monitor schools. He said they don’t measure up as they fail to give adequate information to track down such emerging issues.