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Ghost workers` scam involves almost all ministries - Mahiza
2008-04-19 09:46:42
By Judica Tarimo, Dodoma
The Education and Vocational Training Ministry said yesterday that the ghost teachers scandal unearthed on Thursday involved almost all government ministries and departments.
``It is a network that involves various government ministries and not the Education ministry alone,`` said Deputy Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Mwantumu Mahiza, in an exclusive interview here yesterday.
The Minister of State in the President`s Office (Civil Service Management), Hawa Ghasia, told reporters on Thursday that the government had unearthed 1,413 ghost workers on the payroll of the ministry of Education and Vocational Training.
But yesterday, Mahiza said although her ministry had courteously accepted to shoulder the blame, the dubious payments made to ghost teachers were facilitated by several government departments.
``The Ministry of Finance approved these payments, the Civil Service Department, which keeps records of public servants, must also be involved in one way or another. The blame should not go to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training alone,`` she said.
Mahiza, however, said that her ministry had started conducting internal investigations soon after reports on the scandal surfaced on Thursday.
“We have started our own investigations on who were really responsible and how the dubious payments were made,” she said.
The Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Prof. Jumanne Maghembe, will issue a statement once the investigations had been concluded.
She, however, could not give a specific time-frame for completion of the exercise.
The ghost teachers were uncovered by the government during an audit that was undertaken in between March and December, whereby it was established that phantom staff were pocketing 3bn/- per month.
The national-wide verification exercise conducted in secondary schools listed the number of ghost teachers as follows—Dar es Salaam (218), Morogoro (149), Mwanza (132) and Iringa (119), Rukwa (95), Arusha (72), Dodoma (57), Shinyanga (52) and Singida (50).
Others were Lindi (48), Tanga (48), Mtwara (41), Coast (40), Kagera (35), Manyara (35), Tabora (33),
Kilimanjaro (27), Ruvuma (27), Mara (19) and Kigoma (15).
Out of the secondary schools in question, Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Mwanza, and Iringa schools were leading in hosting a bigger number of ghost teachers.
The government attributes the problem to failure by school managements to submit names of retired, dead,
and transferred teachers to the Civil Service Department.
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