TEWU fight ‘ghost names’

The Central Regional branch of Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) has called on the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to, as a matter of urgency, produce and dispatch all the last Pay Vouchers to district directors and head teachers in the country to check ghost names.

According to them, the directors were the kingpins in the implementation of Ghana Education Service (GES) regulations and could not have been left helpless in the hands of smart officials from September 2012 to June 2013.

They further stressed the need for Controller and Accountant General’s Department to stop blaming innocent directors and heads of institutions who were only victims of circumstances.

They indicated that when the directors and the heads are provided with the Pay Vouchers they would enable them to check whether non-existing “ghost names” have been inserted or remove, in order to reduce fraud in the country.

“In any case why it is that Pay Vouchers have not been received for almost a year? Is it not a deliberate act to conceal a deal?” they asked.

This came to light when the regional council of TEWU had a meeting in Cape Coast to discuss the issue of three GES officials and a bank manager who squandered GH¢175,000.00 at Agona East recently.

The council members were concerned that some professional teachers were performing the duties of non-teaching staff; a practice which they claimed was unacceptable to the union.

“Teachers occupying various accounting positions should go back to classroom since there are inadequate teachers in the classroom,” they said.

It would be recalled that in July this year, three officials of GES and a bank manager at Agona East were arrested by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for allegedly defrauding the state by paying salaries to non-existent employees through the payroll to the tune of GH¢175,000,00.

The suspects are Samuel Mensah and Douglas Kporbatsi who were personnel of the Human Resource Department and Castro Nkum, an administrative officer and bank manager.