Vice presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang says teachers who were paid 3 months salary even though they had worked for closed to 2 years were not employees of the government.
According to her, most of the teachers were engaged by Heads of schools who had assured them of employment.
She said, though some of them were issued with appointment letters by the district education service, major stakeholders like Ministry of Education, the national education service and the Controller and Accountant General were unaware of the supposed employment as a result, they were not enrolled on government’s payroll.
The former Minister of Education recalled that when her attention was drawn to the matter, she consulted the Ministry of Finance for a possible resolution. She added that it was decided by the Ministry of Finance to make an outright payment of 3-month salary while undertaking validation processes to pay the remaining arrears thus, they were paid 3-month salary though they had worked for 2 years.
“There were times when I go to the field, In fact there was case in point, I think it was a small school in the Upper East and there was this young man who approached and said he had taught for years and had not been paid.
So I wanted to see his letter of appointment, he didn’t have any. So how did he get in? Because the headmaster said he should come and teach and when the opportunity comes, they would employ him.
Headmasters don’t employ. And it wasn’t the only story. There were too many of them going around“ she said on Joy Prime TV.
She continued to say “so when we made the report to Finance (Ministry), I said the situation was very bad they said Okay, they would pay them 3 months immediately. They will do validation and they would go case by case. And I was interested in finding out administratively what could have gone wrong for such a situation to arise.
I noticed that sometimes the letter of appointment had been issued by the district and there was no copy to the center, there was no copy to the Accountant General’s department. There was no copy to the Ministry of Finance but the district office does not pay so Ministry does not even know that these persons existed. So how would they be paid?”
Prof. Opoku-Agyemang recounted that the then opposition NPP criticized the decision claiming that it was a ploy by the government to deny teachers their hard-earned money and promised to truncate the validation processes if they were elected into office.
But the validation processes, the NDC’s running mate insisted, was necessary to ascertain the authenticity of the claims before making any payment from the national kitty.
“We spent good money in Mensvick Hotel here in Accra collecting the applications and attachments from all over the country. They came in huge sacks. Many people were paid because everything was in order. What they were told was that it was unnecessary. They (the government) were just taking their money, when they come, they would stop the validation, “she stated.
