UEW student-teachers accuse management, NSS of fraud

There is disquiet between some student-teachers at the Kumasi campus of the University of Education, Winneba, and the authorities of the school as the teachers, who are on study leave, say their names have been spotted on the national service list as personnel.

The 2018 year group from the English department claim their names and index numbers have been captured in the national service system and are being used by third parties as service personnel.

The group, made up of 76 teachers, who just completed their study leave at the university, claim they never registered for national service and are suspecting foul play.

Speaking to Ultimate FM’s Isaac Justice Bediako, the group said their investigations have revealed that their impersonators paid some GHC400 each to some agents to be registered. They said the agents deactivated their phones when they started raising concerns.

According to the group, several attempts to compel managers of the national service scheme to act on the matter have been unsuccessful

“When we realized people are using our details for their national service, we reported the matter first to the NSS office in Kumasi and later informed the Minister of Education Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh, the Regional NSS Manager Opoku Mensah Ashanti and an NSS board member Dr. Kingsley Nyarko hoping that they will do something about it but we are yet to hear anything from them, for this reason we surely believe they are behind this scam,” the group alleged.

“Look my brother we are teachers with over 15 years experience in the teaching profession. We did our national service after training college education therefore, we don’t qualify to do service again, and therefore we did not worry ourselves to register again because we are teachers on study leave. We are highly disappointed to note people are using our index numbers and our names to do service’’ one of them bemoaned.

Meanwhile, Manager of the Ashanti Regional branch of the NSS Mr. Opuku Mensah confirmed his office has detected the fraud in the system and blame the development on the administration of the Kumasi campus of the university.

“I think we should rather investigate the Winneba Kumasi campus for this scam, how did people get their index number and names of teachers on study leave to register for the national service? I suspect an insider from the school’s administration is behind this case. In our next management level meeting that will be the agenda on the table. I will direct my secretary to write to national headquarters on the development,’’ he assured. The University is yet to respond to calls to comment on the matter.

The group revealed that those using their details to do national service are all working in the northern regions adding that so far they have numbers from just the English class, and there might be more from other departments like Mathematics, English Language, among others.