Report unveils 1,000 ghost teachers on payroll

A new report by the Education Service Commission (ESC)has unearthed more than 1,000 ‘ghost’ teachers on the government payroll.

The ‘ghost’ teachers, according to the report, have been on the payroll since 2003.

Some teachers accessed the payroll with fake appointment letters while others lacked practising licences.

According to the commission’s country-wide validation of a 2022 human resource report, 618 teachers from various secondary schools and tertiary institutions who appeared for validation had fake appointment letters.

The other 400 did not take part in the validation exercise on grounds that they had forged appointment letters and did not want their accomplices to be unearthed.

Sources said these were advised by a syndicate of officials who helped them to access fake appointment letters not to appear before the commission for validation.

According to the report, a copy of which Daily Monitor has seen, forgery was highest in the central region, with 204 ‘ghost’ teachers, followed by eastern (192) and northern (110) while western had 112.

“Some public officers are confirmed to possess forged appointments, others were found on the payroll but the commission failed to get their appointment documents,” the ESC chairperson, Prof Samuel Luboga, said in his presentation yesterday.

The Secretary to the ESC, Dr Asuman Lukwago, said they have since forwarded the list of culprits to the CID and State House Anti-Corruption monitoring unit.

He said the culprits have marginalised the 1,000 staff who have all the required documents but are missing on the payroll.

Majority of the fake appointment letters were signed by an Opio Okiror on behalf of the permanent secretary, while others were signed by James Sanya and J.B Ssemakula, all on behalf of the permanent secretary.

According to the report, a total of 1,568 (1,368 secondary and 201 tertiary) institutions were validated during the exercise. Majority of these were in the western region (30.5 per cent) followed by Eastern (26 per cent), central (23.4 per cent) and northern with (20.2 per cent).

A total of 38,787 (34,218 teaching and 4,569 non-teaching staff) with majority 86.4 working in rural areas were validated.

The ESC also observed that some staff had absconded from duty. According to the report, in a few schools, cases of teachers employing their colleagues to teach on their behalf were evident.

“Some substantively appointed teachers were not teaching but decided to sub-contract other private teachers to perform their duties,” the report states.

The report also revealed that in one of the schools, all the 23 teachers on the payroll who did not teach at the school were science teachers.