The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has said the Ghana Education Service (GES) is to be blamed for the high number of ghost names in the service.

This follows a directive from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to the service, to delete 610 ghost names from the government payroll.

Speaking to Class News, GNAT General Secretary, David Ofori Acheampong, said despite members informing the GES about some of these instances, the service failed to act on them on time.

“For this, we do it every day. We have been telling our head teachers because they are direct supervisors of the teachers out there in the classroom,” Mr Ofori said.

“When somebody passes on, they write to the district directorate of education for the person’s name to be taken off the payroll, for this I know they do. The problem is that when the letters get to their office, it takes many months before that name can simply be taken off the list. …I just don’t know why that is [the case].

“I have complained of head teachers, who have complained of death of teachers to their offices and their salaries keep coming. At the end of the month, you go there and you validate and you see that this person’s name is still there. It sometimes takes about six months before the name finally goes off.”

Touching on the recruitment of some fake teachers into the service, Mr Acheampong said the blame must be laid solely on the GES.

He explained: “Most district directors are given the opportunity to recruit supplementary teachers we call pupil teachers to augment the numbers in the various districts and during the process that is where they abuse it.

“…The point is we are not involved in the recruitment. If the employer puts in a certain mechanism, when we have a committee that will do the recruitment to supplement teachers in the districts then definitely as a major stakeholder we would have been part of it and then we would have taken part of the blame. But this is done virtually by the district directorate of education without anybody’s involvement and it becomes very difficult for you to determine that this person doesn’t have the certificate.

“I believe that going forward if we would still have to engage pupil teachers to assist us to make up the numbers, there should be a committee in place made up of the various stakeholders to do the recruitment so that in future the blame can be shared.”