Concord Times (Freetown)
Atieu Jalloh
21 August 2008
Minister of education, youth and sports has said his ministry and the accountant general's office connived to keep dozens of non existent 'ghost teachers' on payroll in order to embezzle money.
Dr Minkailu Bah told the BBC that many of the 33,000 teachers receiving salaries existed only on paper.
The embezzlement, he said, amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Meanwhile, investigations instituted since the minister took up office found out that a very different picture from the one painted by his officials.
"I started going on an exercise where we monitor schools and see what is happening there," he said.
On a tour of one district, Dr Bah said he personally found five schools with 68 non-existent teachers.
"In another area, a primary school had 39 teachers and when a man came to verify, he could not come with teachers. He ran away but was captured by the police," he said.
The former university head of department also stated that many schools which receive subsidies that were on the ministry's books were also "ghost schools." He added: "but we are going to unearth these malpractices and take serious action against them."
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