The Ministry of Education and Sport has suspended the transfer and deployment of both teaching and non-teaching staff in all educational institutions. The suspension comes at a time when the Auditor General is carrying out an audit of the government payroll.
Ketty Lamaro, the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Education, says that the new verification process is a segment of a nationwide exercise that the auditor general’s office will conduct to determine the count of public officers.
“In light of the above, the Ministry of Education and Sports has temporarily suspended the transfer and deployment of teaching and non-teaching staff effective 17 April until further notice to enable the auditor general’s office to carry out this exercise,” the communication addressed to the head of institutions read in part.
The Ministry of Finance ordered the Auditor-General to conduct a comprehensive audit of the government payroll to determine the exact number of civil servants and the correct salary payments. This audit is in response to many districts and government agencies reporting wage shortfalls, which have caused workers to miss salaries for months.
The education sector, which employs the majority of public servants, has been particularly affected, as it has been unable to deploy 4,000 teachers recruited by the education service commission since last year due to the lack of funds.
Over the years, the government has implemented various initiatives to address the issue of non-existent teachers being paid from the national treasury, including school inspections, teacher validation, and headcounts. Some of these initiatives involved intelligence agencies.
In 2012, the government established a Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Mismanagement of the Universal Primary and Secondary Education Programme, which investigated the issue of teachers. The commission, chaired by High Court Justice Ezekiel Muhanguzi, was outraged by the Ministry of Public Service’s negligence in managing the teachers’ payroll.
Even after a decade, the problem of non-existent teachers on the payroll persists, costing taxpayers billions of shillings. Available data shows that the government spends 7.3 billion Shillings annually on salaries paid to unscrupulous teachers who do not exist.
This amount of money could be used to build three fully-equipped seed schools, each valued at Shillings 2.3 billion. However, the damage caused to students who are taught by unqualified teachers is incalculable.
The new payroll audit comes about six months after the Education Service Commission-ESC conducted a nationwide validation of human resources in government-owned and aided schools, which focused on secondary schools and tertiary institutions.
The report, released in June 2022, was intended to help the government determine the number of teachers in schools and identify gaps and issues such as ghost teachers, teacher-pupil ratios, teacher workload, and other factors with their preliminary report indicating that there are over 1000 ghost teachers on the payroll.
Some individuals in the sector are doubtful that the impending audit will effectively resolve the issue it was meant to address. Others have raised questions about why the government did not utilize data already gathered by the Education Service Commission for secondary schools before implementing the new process.
For instance, Filbert Baguma, the Secretary of the Uganda National Teachers Union, UNATU, expressed support for the audit of primary schools since they were not handled by the ESC but criticized the new process for secondary schools as a waste of government funds and a sign of poor coordination between government departments.
Baguma further argued that while the audit is important, there is no reason to halt the deployment of staff who are necessary for delivering services in schools and were likely recruited for that purpose.
He further attributed the absence of a wage bill, which affected the education sector and has led to delays in the deployment of teachers, to poor planning. Baguma adds that the government cannot recruit staff after setting aside their wage, and this has been a major problem.
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