Education Ministry Has Highest Number Of Ghost Names - Okudzeto

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa 
The Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Tertiary Education, Okudzeto Ablakwa has revealed that his Ministry has the highest number of ghost names on government's pay roll.

Speaking at the Government for the People Forum in Koforidua in the Eastern Region, Mr. Ablakwa said ' we have also had the opportunity to discover ghosts as usual and I feel embarrassed that my sector has the highest number of ghosts.'

'Every now and then we have ghosts that we find but we managed to identify 46,888 ghosts this time around. Some were also people who have left the profession ,' the Minister added.

Mr. Ablakwa was however quick to add that government has deleted those names from the pay roll.

The issue of ghost names has been lingering for sometime now.

In July, the Controller and Accountant Generals Department (CAGD) deleted 3,179 ghost names from the pay rolls of public institutions in Greater Accra alone between April and June.

This was as a result of the implementation of the Electronic Salary Payment Voucher System (E-SPV) system.

Investigations at the National Service Secretariat also revealed that about GHC 7.9 million was paid to 22,612 to non-existent national service persons in more than 100 districts in July 2014.

Teacher Absenteeism
Speaking on the increasing spate of teacher absenteeism in Ghana, the Minister stated that the situation is prevalent in most regions, saying 'when we went to the Ministry of Education, teacher absenteeism in Ghana was 27 percent. More than a qauarter of teachers don't show up, they don't show up at all. That is not acceptable…'

He said the situation compelled the Ministry to set up a committee to address the menace.

'Clearly we could not continue with that, so what we did was that my Ministry declared zero tolerance against teacher absenteeism . There was a full blown war.'

In March, the Ministry of Education  commissioned a committee to design modalities for addressing the issue of teacher absenteeism, as part of efforts to effectively implement the policy of Zero Tolerance for Teacher Absenteeism and to increase teachers' time spent in the classroom.

The committee was mandated to deliberate and submit proposals to address the issue.

Source: Citifmonline.com