Nformi Sonde Kinsai
25 February 2008
Some 5000 teachers of the Ministry of Secondary Education, MINESEC, are under threat of salary suspension for various acts considered dubious by the Ministries of Public Service and Administrative Reform and that of Finance.
A list of names and purported crimes jointly established by the Ministries of Public Service and Finance has been pasted on the walls of MINESEC.
In a service note dated February 6, the MINESEC boss, Louis Bapés Bapés, said the list is the outcome of the work of an inter-ministerial committee that was set up to study the files of civil servants brought from the field by census agents. The note states that such efforts are aimed at sanitising the public service payroll.
The Minister advised the teachers concerned to meet officials of the provincial delegations where they are based to have the problems resolved within three months or face the risk of having their salaries suspended coupled with disciplinary sanctions.
When The Post browsed through the list, names of some renowned pedagogic inspectors, principals, senior discipline masters etc were on the list. Some of the complaints against the teachers include the absence of documents such as integration decisions and ten years engagement bonds with the State in their files, reception of money from the Treasury without the order of the Paymaster, suppression of indemnities, people above retirement age working and earning full salaries, while others have been called up to 'clarify their situations.'
Some officials in MINESEC and Public Service, who spoke to The Post anonymously, said the crimes enlisted against some of the teachers sound mild but that serious trouble is looming in the horizon for those who would be unable to justify the charges.
They hinted that some of the teachers in complicity with document counterfeiters, inadvertently promoted themselves to higher positions and are dubiously earning huge allowances as a result. They cited situations where some teachers through fake appointment and advancement decisions promoted themselves to the rank of Directors, others as Principals, Vice Principals, Senior Discipline Masters, Heads of Departments, and so on.
They said others lay claim to children that don't exist and are fraudulently extracting huge sums of money from the State in family allowances.On what the sanctions against people caught in the net may be, one of them, referring to the public service code, said outright dismissals and imprisonment for defrauding the State cannot be ruled out.
She said those who have been earning undue allowances and still have long years of service would have the 'stolen' sums deducted gradually from their pay packages, while those on the verge of retirement may forfeit everything. She, however, said some of those on the list are surely scapegoats.
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