When Your Child Is Coached by A Ghost
- Category: Education
- Date 20-04-2008
- 319 views
“Send us your child for heavenly, integral education." Our teachers are from mars; they were trained in heaven and posted here on earth to render services without burdening the parents of their learners. The Holy Spirit is part of our staff; he is actually the headteacher.
Parents are not required to pay school dues; by the grace of God, our teachers are able to earn their salaries from the regime coffers, while they are dead or alive.” This advertisement should have appeared in this newspaper before the Bongo government woke up to discover the mess that has bedevilled the teachers’ payroll.
For the first time in Africa, teachers have received national attention. Sadly, this has been negative publicity, regarding fraud and theft of government monies. The interest of your columnist was aroused when the minister for Public Service Management, Hon Hawa Ghasia announced last week that during the six-year period spanning 2001 - 2007, nonexistent teachers almost eclipsed the entire teaching industry in Bongo, and that ghosts earned more than three billion Tanzania shillings in salaries.
A charged minister Ghasia said the ghostly eye-opener came to light in a recent survey her office conducted, covering 2,861 public secondary schools. A total of 1,413 spirit teachers were unearthed which constitutes about 5% of all teachers commissioned and deployed by our government.
Teachers who die are still allowed to teach our children and earn a salary. Those who abandon teaching for further studies or greener pastures are able to leave behind their spirits in the classrooms to ensure that normal lessons are conducted and the government salaries secured. (See: “Officials reap sh3bn from phantom teachers” The Citizen 17th April 2008).
Whoever called this country Bongo was not wrong. It is a very creative nation. Before we question the wisdom beneath this level of dexterity, we must remember that someone failed to perform their functions properly, from the highest office in this land to the individual level where the money is delivered and devoured.
The unfortunate part of this story is that many of the teachers who have been erased from the payroll might actually be alive and serving and could spend a couple of years to come painfully beseeching government to review its error and reinstate them on the payroll without success. The government which has paid ghosts teachers for a long time will now fail the real for a long time again. Nothing can be more painful.
Moreover, how much are the teachers paid? It is peanuts! This writer is a teacher by training. He can confess with confidence nonetheless that if his government salary was paid plus three other salaries for ghosts, it would make little difference in his wellbeing.
It will be saddening that many genuine teachers will henceforth suffer for mistakes other than their own, simply because Bongo government allowed loopholes in their remunerative system which continued to post salaries onto the bank accounts of ghost teachers. Soon, we shall need another courageous teacher to come up like Mwalimu Nyerere did once upon a time to campaign for the welfare of teachers countrywide.
Government can at times be dangerously erratic. Peering Eye will accept to be crucified for denouncing Minister Ghasia’s proclamation that thousands of teachers have been expunged from the dear payroll. I can bet that the minister has not crosschecked her facts before coming up with the offensive decision to delete the names of teachers from the payroll.
Minister Hawa Ghasia cannot have done sufficient consultations with the school system. Teachers remain underdogs in most of Africa and the world , many of whom will die in silence as they have no platform since they either are located in rural, hard to reach areas or are frustrated by the bureaucratic government structures and procedures.
The minister did not tell the media what government will do if they discover they have wrongfully deleted Peering Eye or other teacher from the payroll. If they find so to confirm whether they will pay damages for wrongful punishment and inconvenience.
Teachers must stand up!
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen