Address issue of ghost names and bloating pay rolls

Tamale, Sept 25, GNA - Mr Chikpah Demuyakor, the Northern Regional Director of Education, has expressed concern over ghost names, bloating of pay roles as well as impersonation in schools and offices. He said this was a bane on education delivery, had a heavy toll on resources in secular schools and called for effective monitoring and supervision of schools by their management boards. Mr Demuyakor said this at the inauguration of the Governing Board of the Islamic Education Unit, which has Alhaji Basits Fuseini as its chairman at Tamale on Saturday.

Mr Demuyakor also expressed concern about the encroachment on school lands and said it was aggravating and needed to be addressed by all stakeholders.

He drew the attention of the board members to the increasing spate of indiscipline in schools and urged them to assist parents and school authorities to find a solution to it.

Hajia Fati Seidu, Acting General Manager of the Islamic Education Unit, said Islamic schools were lacking in infrastructure and other logistics and some of the schools were housed in rented premises. ''This tends to discourage educational authorities from providing our needs in terms of supplies of basic requirements for teaching and learning", she said.

She said the Islamic Education Unit needed improvement to raise them to the level of other sister Education Units. Mr Mohammed Baba, the Tamale Metropolitan Coordinating Director who inaugurated the board, urged the members to lobby the government to give maximum attention to education in Moslem communities. He said under the Social Investment Fund, the assembly had provided over one billion cedis for the construction of 17 school blocks out of which two are Islamic schools.

Alhaji Fuseini expressed gratitude to the people for giving them the opportunity to promote the cause of secular education in Islamic schools.