Deputy Education Minister for Administration, Henrique B. Wilson, has alarmed over the stockpile of ghost names on the Ministry’s payroll. Deputy Minister Wilson disclosed that during his recent visit to the southeastern part of Liberia, including Grand Gedeh, Maryland, River Gee and Grand Kru counties, he identified several names on teacher’s payroll that are not working but receiving salaries at the end of every month as government teachers.

Speaking to journalists in Monrovia Thursday, upon his return from southeast, Minister Wilson vowed that Ministry carry out rigorous scrutiny, and weed out the ghost names, including those receiving double salaries.

About five thousand names he termed as ghost names on government teacher’s payroll were indentified recently and have been deleted due to the same situation.

According to him, over eight hundred teachers were discovered in Grand Kru County on the Ministry of education teachers’ payroll something he said was impossible to be especially a little county like Grand Kru with that number of government’s teachers. 

At the same time, the Deputy Minister of Education has indicated that due the situation especially with schools in the southeastern area, the Ministry conducts a mass meeting with over thirty government schools’ officials in Harper Maryland to ensure that those names affecting government teacher’s payroll are deleted.

Minister Wilson also noted that based on some of those problems, the Ministry spent at least 11.2 million United States dollars in its last budget. 

Minister Wilson named the actual employees of the Ministry as about twenty three thousand persons across the country. 

He further pointed out that there were some schools also indentified in some of those counties that were not qualified as junior and senior high schools, but had managed to send some of their students to sit for this year’s West African Examinations Council (WAEC).

The MOE official said the Ministry had already taken action by demoting some of those schools from senior high to junior level to ensure that the educational sector of Liberia is not affected.

He further revealed that a staff currently working at the Ministry has been discovered as teacher of the E. Reginald Goodridge High school in Monrovia and getting double salary at the ministry. 

The staff in question will shortly be turned over to the Ministry of Justice and the Liberia National Police (LNP), for proper investigation, he indicated.